DETERMINED to get to the root of the alleged scam surrounding the multi- billion dollar oil swap deal, the House of Representatives yesterday summoned the heads of two leading oil trading companies in the country.

The lawmakers, via the Zakari Mohammed-led ad-hoc committee probing the operations of the swap programme of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) / PPMC and the benefiting oil companies, particularly fixed Tuesday next week as ultimatum to the chief executive officers of Aiteo Nigeria Limited and Ontario Nigeria Limited to appear before the panel or face the wrath of the law.

Mohammed told reporters that his committee had already procured a warrant to effect arrest of the two oil chiefs if they refused to appear and present their own side of the story on Tuesday next week.

The panel chairman, who disclosed that two other indigenous oil trading companies had duly made submissions to his committee, said the lawmakers would resist any attempt to frustrate it’s mandate to unravel the wrongdoings in the deal.

His words: s”We have taken on a number of agencies so far. The Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Nigeria Custom Service (NCS), NEITI and the Duke Oil. We have taken them and gotten brilliant submissions.
“We were to dovetail towards receiving marketers because if you look at the entire crude oil swap thing, the fact is that Duke Oil Nigeria Limited which is a subsidiary of the NNPC is saddled with the responsibility of crude lifting. But because, according to them, they have inadequacies in certain areas, they decided to engage other marketers and those marketers are the ones we were supposed to examine today.

“Sadly enough, two of those marketers, that is Messers Aiteo Nigeria Limited , and Messers Ontario Nigeria Limited decided to come via legal representatives. The procedure of the parliament as far as we are concerned is that the legal representative does not have the locus standi as far as representations is concerned.”