The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has summoned the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Service, Adewale Adeniyi.
The Head of Media, Public Petitions Committee, Chooks Oko, disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said the Customs chief is expected to appear before the committee on February 18 to answer a petition on the refusal of some top officials of the service to leave the service after reaching retirement age.
Oko said: “Obasi-Pherson Help Foundation had petitioned the 10th House, alleging that some assistant comptrollers and comptrollers were due for retirement but have blatantly refused to leave the service.
“They named the affected officers as Imam, Umar, and Egwu, all assistant comptrollers, and Awe, Fati, and Faith, comptrollers as the culprits.”
The spokesman stressed that Adeniyi had a duty as a public officer to tell Nigerians the truth about the situation.
“Nigerians deserve to know the truth of the matter and it is only the CG that can clarify the situation,” he added.
The committee also threatened to order the arrest of the Director-General of the Nigerian Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Bisoye Coker-Odusote.
This followed Coker-Odusote’s failure to appear before the lawmakers to explain the refusal to pay for the state-of-the-art software development project.
The Chairman of the committee, Mike Etaba, frowned at the continuous absence of the NIMC director-general despite several invitations.
He said: “If she fails to show up at the next hearing of this case, we’ll have no option than to ask the Inspector-General of Police to bring her.
“How can an official of government treat constituted authority with such levity? We can no longer condone such attitude.”