By Jefferson Ibiwale, Benin

The war of words between Edo state governor, Adams Oshiomhole, and members of cabinet of former president Goodluck Jonathan has continued unabated with the former calling on former works minster, Mike Onolemhemen, to apologise to Nigerians for terrible state of federal roads across the country.

Oshiomhole was reacting to calls by the former minister that he should apologies to Nigerians over his remark that N140 billion was spent on the Second Niger Bridge without much to show for.

He said that the minister and members of the Sovereign Wealth Fund are the ones to apologise to the country for their poor performance, especially concerning the construction and rehabilitation of roads.

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The governor’s reaction was contained in a press statement issued by his spokesperson, Peter Okhiria.

“The revelation came from those who were managers of the Sovereign Wealth Funds and not figures manufactured by anybody. They told our Committee that about $700 million were taken from the Sovereign Wealth Fund for the Second Niger Bridge project,” the statement said.

“Fully aware that not much has been achieved on that project, Onolemhemen and the managers of the Sovereign Wealth Funds should explain to Nigerians what really transpired, instead of asking Comrade Oshiomhole to apologize to Nigerians. The real people who should apologize to Nigerians for their many sins against the country are those who expended so much of our resources without any corresponding achievements to show for it.”

Oshiomhole said the bad condition of federal roads in Edo state attests to the poor performance of the minister, who incidentally is from the state.

“In Edo state, the Aduwawa end of the Benin-Auchi road is almost impassable especially during this rainy season. As we speak, erosion has cut off the Benin-Auchi road into two and motorists are going through hell passing through that road. What about Benin-Abraka road; one hell of a road completely abandoned and vandalized. People should find time to pass through Uromi-Agbor road, a major highway connecting the Eastern part of the country, it is an eye sore. Yet, we had a Minister of Works who hails from Uromi,” Oshiomole lamented.

During Jonathan’s tenure, it was widely reported that the Ministry of Works had built and rehabilitated 25, 000 out of the about 35, 000 federal roads in the country, but the Edo state governor thinks otherwise.

“Roads from Oyo to Ilorin, Ilorin to Jebba and Bida, from Ore to Ijebu-Ode, from Ikom to Calabar, Onitsha to Enugu are amongst the several roads that explain the sad commentary on the state of Nigerian roads,” he observed.

“Aside from being death traps, they represent in graphic terms, the poor performance of the last regime in terms of roads construction and rehabilitation. Rather than hide his head in shame; Onolemhemen is still oozing out diatribe against Nigerians. We deserve explanation and no amount of blackmail can stop us from speaking out about the fate of our country,” the governor stated.

By Jefferson Ibiwale, Benin

Governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole, on Monday said that the recent political appointments made by President Muhammadu Buhari were in order.

Oshiomhole, in a press statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Peter Okhiria, said from his perspective, all the persons appointed by the president deserved their new positions as they were qualified to head their different portfolios.

Oshiomhole, who was obviously reacting to the massive outcry generated by the 29 new appointments recently made by the president, noted that in particular, the appointments of the new Chief of Staff to the President, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Comptroller General of Customs and Presidential Liaison Officers to the National Assembly, were based on merit and not political sentiments or ethnic consideration.

“The appointments are based on merit and not political sentiments or ethnic consideration as some tribal jingoists would have us believe. The Nigerian nation has come to a point where we have to use the best hands to confront the peculiarity of our problems,” Oshimhole noted.

He said for Nigeria to develop rapidly it must jettison primordial sentiments and equally employ unusual to solve its numerous problems.

He noted that the level of decay in the country at present required very seasoned hands and incorruptible Nigerians, many of which are part of the new appointments made by the government.

He said the president ought to be commended rather than vilified for taking the bold step in selecting capable hands.

“If we must make a huge difference in the lives of Nigerians, things must be done differently. We cannot continue to apply same template in the recruitment of persons and expect different results.

The new appointees are Nigerians who have served the country in different capacities before now and deserved every bit of our cooperation and support to make them excel in their new jobs,” he added.

The United States of America on Monday condemned the killing of villagers in Baanu, Nganzai Local Government Area of Borno State on Friday.

It said the raid on the villages was tragic and equally extended its condolence to the families of those killed and the injured.

Boko Haram militants had invaded Baanu on Friday killing and maiming many of the villagers.

In a statement issued by the spokesman of the US Department of State, John Kirby, the US said the violence being perpetrated by the sect was taking a huge toll on the North east.

It also expressed sadness at the continued captivity of the Chibok girls.

“These recent raids are just additional examples of the horrific and indiscriminate violence that Boko Haram continues to use to terrorise civilians in the North-East of Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin region. August 27 marked the 500^th day since Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from their school in Chibok.  We send our continued condolences to the families and loved ones of the girls who remain missing.  The kidnapping of the schoolgirls in Chibok galvanised international attention for the Boko Haram conflict,” it said.

The US also pledged its continued support to the governments and people of the Lake Chad Basin region in the countries in their concerted struggle against insurgency.

It said it would continue to provide support via a number of security and counter-terrorism assistance programmes, which would provide intelligence, advisors, training, equipment, and logistics.

Between himself, his Chief Security Officer and the former Petroluem Minister, former President Goodluck Jonathan spent, in just one deal, a princely $6.9 million dollars to buy three 40-feet mobile stages for use during mass public speaking events, investigations have now revealed.

Federal government investigators and security agencies say this is just one of the tons of allegedly corrupt practices frequently engaged and condoned under the presidency of the immediate past president.

Besides the fact that the sum for the stages have been incredibly inflated according to mobile stages industry experts, government investigators say there is no evidence as yet that any stage was purchased at all.

While the cost of mobile stages range in size and designs, only outlandish rock star musicians in Europe and the U.S. spend hundreds of thousands on their huge stages way bigger than the 40-feet stages. Even then, those musicians and super stars would not pay over $2m per stage, according to industry sources.

The process of procurement of the three mobile stages was neither known to extant Nigerian laws and due process regulations, nor were the offices of the Auditor-General and the Accountant-General in the know, according to investigators.

“There are no records of this purchase which was carried out in late 2011,” says an authoritative source.

This purchase was carried out only few months after Mr. Jonathan won a general election for a full term after having completed the term of late President Umaru Yar’adua.

A competent source said that at the centre of the fraudulent financial ring was the former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to President Jonathan, Gordon Obuah, who initiated a memo to the former president on October 17, 2011 asking for the purchase of three mobile stages.

He said in that memo to the former president that this is regarding “my earlier discussion with Your Excellency on the security implication of your public appearances and your subsequent directive on the need to procure a secured presidential platform”.

And on the same day, without any financial advise or purchase order reviews, the former president minuted an approval of the request to buy the three stages to the then Minister for Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke.

In his minute, the president said “we have discussed this, please deal.”

Right after that okay from the president, on the same October 17, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Administrative Matters, Matt Aikhionbere did another letter on the strength of the president’s approval requesting the Petroluem Minister to take action on the request to purchase the stages for $6.9m.

By the next month, an NNPC payment voucher number 3840336 was already in place revealing that the money was released.

The NNPC directed that the money be taken from one of its accounts in New York CITIBANK with sort code CITIUS 33, and Routing number 021000089.

It was first routed from the US bank to an NNPC account in Zenith Bank account number 5000026593, Maitama branch in Abuja, from where the money was sent to a private account.

The sum of $6.9m was then credited to a Sterling Bank account of one J. Marine Logistics Limited, Abuja, a company investigators say was registered by Obuah.

The CSO himself according to investigators have not been able to show proof of the purchase and his memo irked his bosses at the SSS that he took the initiative to write requesting for the stages, an action officials say was way above his pay grade.

Said an official of one of the security agencies conducting the investigation, “it is not the duty or responsibility of the CSO to make the determination on that purchase. He was meant to have informed the service, which will then review the situation and act accordingly.”

The source continued: “What has happened here is that the former president and the former minister with the collusion of the CSO decided to dip their hands into the public till and steal public funds for other purposes since no one has found the stages as we speak.”

The source said specifically that the $6.9miilion in question was promptly paid on November 29, 2011 into a private account belonging to the former CSO.

“The former president approved the procurement of the mobile platforms without due process, bypassing the Procurement Act.

“There was also no appropriation in the 2011 budget for such facility,” investigators said.

The source added that neither the minister of Finance nor the Director-General of the Budget Office was aware of the deal.

Investigators say this is just one of the several instances where the Jonathan administration used secret NNPC accounts to fund many questionable projects and for alleged personal financial aggrandizement.

Already the CSO has been questioned over his role and activities in the Jonathan presidency. It would be recalled that he was arrested, detained, questioned and later released.

Former President Jonathan and Mrs. Alison-Madueke could not be reached for comments.

But when contacted by PREMIUM TIMES, Mr. Obuah denied initiating or engaging in any such transaction.

“The allegation is totally false and baseless,” the former CSO said through his lawyer, Andrew Itsekiri.

“There was nothing like that. No such memo was initiated and no such money was released to him. They are just levying allegations they cannot substantiate against him.

“It is one of the allegations he was confronted with by the SSS, and it was found that they were pack of lies. Let NNPC come out with the records that any such funds were released to him.”

There has been considerable pressure mounted on the Buhari administration regarding its determination to probe allegations of corruption in the past, including from the National Peace Committee headed by the former Head of State, General Abdusalami Abubakar.

A member of that committee, Bishop Mathew Kukah, is also known alongside Mr. Abubakar and others in the Committee to have been involved in attempts to mellow-out the resolve of President Buhari in his determination to probe and deal decisively with tremendous corrupt practices especially during the last six to eight years.

Reecall that at the June 29 meeting of the National Economic Council at the state House, the council raised questions over the non- remittance of the finances generated by the NNPC into the federation account.

NEC found that whereas the NNPC claimed to have earned about N8.1trillion in the last two years, what NNPC paid into the Federation Account during the same period was about N4.3 trillion, keeping the balance in its several secret accounts, allowing the former president and his cronies access to such unknown accounts to do as they please.

Consequently, NEC set up a four-man committee to investigate the missing money.
The committee, made up of Governors of Edo, Kaduna, Akwa Ibom and Gombe, submitted an interim report to NEC but in addition appointed financial experts to conduct forensic audit of the accruals into the federation account and the withdrawals from the excess crude account.

Also President Buhari, in an attempt to plug some of the procedural loopholes that facilitate and encourage corruption, directed that all revenue-generating agencies of goverment, including NNPC should now pay all revenues to a Treasury Single Account, TSA.

TSA makes it rather difficult to hide government revenues from any agency, and procedurally discourages a situation where the president can be accessing a secret slush account without the knowledge of the entire public finance process as was the case in this bogus $6.9m purchase of mobile stages.

This report was first published on Premium Times. We have their permission to republish

The All Progressives Congress, APC, on Sunday made new allegations of corrupt practices against the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

It accused the leadership of the PDP of instances of insane looting of the treasury, saying that the mess that characterized the past administration was so pervasive that until it was cleaned, Nigeria would not be able to actualize its potentials.

It listed the new cases of corruption it had just discovered as the $2.2 billion US arms scandal, a $6.9 million fraud by the Chief Security Officer, CSO, to President Jonathan, committed under the guise of buying three mobile stages for the President and the N2.5 billion scam involving the rent of house boats.

It said that it was virtually impossible for the ruling APC to keep quiet in the face of massive corruption that it had recently discovered.

In a statement issued by the party in Abuja by its national publicity secretary, Lai Mohammed, the APC listed other acts of impunity carried out by the Jonathan led administration.

”On Aug. 16th 2015, we listed some instances of the breath-taking looting of the treasury by some officials of the immediate past administration. Today, we bring three more heart rending cases to the attention of Nigerians. We will not relent until closure has been brought to this issue,” it said.

”While those charged with handling these cases are finalizing the details of bringing the suspects to justice, our immediate concern is the attempt by the PDP, under whose umbrella the looting took place, to blame the Buhari Administration for the mess and then infer that things have been worse in Nigeria in the past 3 months under the APC-led federal government than in the 16 years under the PDP. This is totally provocative, shameless and uncharitable,” the APC said.

It said further that even if the APC was yet to fulfill some of its campaign promises, the slow pace ought to be attributed to the PDP, which stole massive funds that would have been used for developmental projects by the new government.

The party however assured Nigerians of better days ahead, as all its campaign promises will be kept because of the commitment and determination of President Buhari.

”It is clear to all Nigerians that the debilitating impact of 16 years of PDP’s misrule cannot be reversed in just 3 months. It is an obvious truth that it is always easier to destroy than to construct, but nothing will stand in the way of the Buhari Administration’s commitment to improving the quality of life of Nigerians and making our country to function again,” it said.

It said the current administration would not be deterred in its efforts to birth a new Nigeria and urged Nigerians to be patient with the Buhari administration as it was battling with the global downturn in world economy as well as the rot left behind by the past government.

“Only very few countries, if any, are growing as fast as they did, in say two years ago. From China, India, Russia, South Africa, to Ghana, Malaysia and Brazil, every country is feeling the effects of a sustained slowdown in global growth,” it noted.

The APC spokesperson also said the government supports the policies of the CBN in its quest to ensure greater transparency in the Forex market and eliminate currency substitution in the economy.

It added that the CBN’s policy to stop cash deposits of foreign currency was in line with global best practices and had led to a drastic reduction in the bureau de change exchange rate for the dollar.