Senate extends committee deadline by two month

The Senate has extended the deadline given to the committee probing the N30tn Ways and Means secured by the Federal Government from the Central Bank of Nigeria under Godwin Emefiele.

The extension was granted following a request by the chairman of the panel, Senator Isah Jibrin, (APC, Kogi East), on Thursday.

At the inauguration of the panel, On March 11, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, had given the 17-member panel six weeks to probe the Ways and Means.

The panel resumed physical meetings on Tuesday after receiving more documents from the office of the Accountant General.

The panel had written to the OAGF seeking additional documents to deepen its probe of the controversial N30tn loan obtained by the President Muhammadu-led administration.

Confirming the receipt of the document, Jibrin said the AGF had sent the documents to the National Assembly.

He said, “Yes, the documents have come from the AGF and distributed to all panel members. At the moment, we are all studying it and once that is concluded we will resume physical meetings hopefully by next week.”

He added, “Nigerians can be assured that we will ensure due diligence and see that we do not let them down. Like I earlier said, we had never stopped working on the probe, we just needed more documents and now that we have them, nothing can hold us back.”

On receiving the document, Senator Jibrin approached the Senate at plenary requesting more time for the committee to study the document and extend its probe.

NewsNow had on April 26, reported that Senator Jibrin told our correspondent that the panel would seek an extension of the probe.

He said, “The Senate has been on recess for about a month now, we will seek an extension when we resume. We will ensure that a thorough job is done.”