Two officials from the Bank of Agriculture have been placed in the custody of the National Assembly due to the non-appearance of the bank’s Managing Director, Mr Kabir Adamu before the House of Reps Committee on Public Accounts.
The Committee had invited the MD to answer queries about an alleged N10 billion financial impropriety from the office of the Auditor-General against his organisation in 2014 and 2015.
Mr. Emmanuel Ameh, the Executive Director, Regional Banking for the Bank tried to defend the absence of the MD by telling the committee that the MD had urgently needed to attend to some other matters.
Ameh said, “My MD was here with us until he got a call from our office that officials from the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank were around to discuss a loan the bank is seeking to obtain on behalf of the country”
Members of the House of Reps committee however felt that the MD should have accorded the committee more respect and waited to appear before it.
Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Kingsley Chinda (Rivers-PDP) said “The MD told me about the meeting and I asked him to wait but he felt the meeting with donor agencies is more important than the meeting with the parliament”.
“He has shown lack of respect for the parliament on the basis of going to obtain loan from donor agencies which we don’t know if it will be used judiciously.
“Right here are some queries against the bank from the Auditor-General and he has not answered them, yet he is rushing to get more loans”
The committee therefore decided to detain Mr. Ameh along with the bank’s Legal Adviser, Mr Haruna Babaji pending when the MD, Mr. Kabir Adamu would appear before it.
