The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts, on Thursday, dismissed a delegation from the Department of Petroleum Resources from the venue of an investigative hearing on alleged financial irregularities in the department running into trillions of naira.

The committee criticised the Director/Chief Executive Officer of DPR, Sarki Auwalu, for repeatedly shunning its summons, which were issued based on queries raised by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation.

Some of the queries read, “Department of Petroleum Resources collected the sum of N733,054,301, I73.04 but paid a net of N706,283,397,141.80.

READ ALSO UPDATED Defection: Buhari receives Umahi at Aso Villa

“Review of documents relating to outstanding royalty, gas flare penalty, gas sales royalty and concession rental due from Oil and Gas Companies showed that the sum of $3,214,022,999.93 was not collected by DPR as and when due.”

The Deputy Chairman of the committee, Abdulkadir Abdullahi, decried that the lawmakers had been receiving excuses from the DPR boss on why he would not appear before them.

Abdullahi said, “We just received the letter that he won’t be coming today and the submissions also. I am afraid; I do not think we should allow this appearance to go on because respect begets respect. If the CEO won’t appear, he should have informed us earlier. And this is not first time, you have been making excuses one after the other, and today again, it is the same old story.”