‘War’ on Obasanjo’s men

By Jackson Udom

SoludoIn the country today, the past government led by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is under probe. Though Obasanjo himself is not under probe but most of the parastatals and ministries being probed were headed by those who were very close confidants of his.

This probe did not only engender a general acclaim in some quarters but also raised curiosity as many have not stopped wondering why the President Umaru Yar’Adua-led civilian government, believed to have been installed by former President Obasanjo as the nation’s president, should encourage the probe.

Many had thought that the choice of Umaru, apart from the need to compensate the Yar’Adua family, was also an attempt to put into office someone who could be trusted. Obasanjo was said to have seen in Yar’Adua someone he could control from his base in Ota.

He was said to have also confided in some of his associates that he decided to throw his weight behind him because the Yar’Adua presidency would not support anything against his interest. No sooner had Obasanjo left office on May 29, 2007, than calls from several quarters for the probe of the last administration headed by him, hit the airwaves.

The House of Representatives soon heeded the calls. Still, many chose to see the probe as a witch hunt and an attempt by the House to settle scores with the last administration. The House’s spokesman, Hon Eziuche Ubani however said,”the Nigerian people are complaining that they are so many probes being carried out by the House,but why the complaint? It is not right. If you look at Section 88 of the 1999 Constitution which we are currently using, the provision empowers us to monitor the activities of government and their agencies. What we are doing is a system review, a process review, not neccesarily a probe.What we are doing is a process review to to investigate the processes of what went wrong”.

Few weeks ago however, a probe into the power sector blazed the trail and in its wake a pandora box was opened. Though the former president has not been summoned before the Elumelu-led House of Representatives Committee on Power to answer questions on the exact amount expended on the sector during his tenure, most of his trusted aides, particilarly Liyel Imoke and Olusegun Agagu, governors of Cross River and Ondo respectively, have appeared before the committee.
El-Rufai

Not too long ago, a member of the kitchen cabinet of the former president, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, and a key member of Obasanjo’s economic team, was summoned before the committee on Power. Her Ministry of Finance counterpart during the period when power sector contracts were awarded, Dr Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala, was also drilled by the committee.

Okonjo-Iweala was the formulator of the need to pay back Nigeria’s external debt, a move which was endorsed by all financial sectors of the world and seen as a move to free the country from the yoke placed on it by the huge debt. It took the country several months of negotiations before this could be achieved.

On her part, Oby was known as Madam Due Process because of her strong desire to effect a standardisation in the way government business was done. She created checks and balances in almost all route to the award of contracts. The two were asked to explain why and how a whopping sum of #16 billion was released to the sector,with no corresponding success.

Another prominent member of the Obasanjo government was Mallam Nasir el- Rufai, who presided over the Federal Capital Ministry(FCT). Actions and decisions taken by him are currently being reviewed by the Senate. Daily, several allegations are being levelled against the dimunitive administrator, particularly, the alleged sale and re-allocation of government lands to the few powerful members of the society believed to be loyalists of the former president. El- Rufai is also being accused of illegally demolishing property of people perceived to be enemies of the former president, even when there were court orders to the contrary.

The probe is ongoing, while the man at the centre of it appeared before the Senator Sodangi-led committeeon Wednesday where he demolished all allegations levelled against him. Also last week, the federal government beamed its searchlight on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) where another member of the Obasanjo kitchen cabinet, Professor Charles Soludo calls the shot.

Soludo was so central to Obasqanjo’s economic reform because he was the architect of the banking reforms which restored confidence in the banking sector and effectively reurned the middle class to Nigeria. He was also a key member of the team that decided to pay off Nigeria’s foreign debts.

In the early days of this administration, Soludo’s attempt to redenominate the naire was thrown overboard by Aso Rock in a manner that many suspect was political. All these notwithstanding, petitions have flooded the presidency, over allegations that Soludo invested $480m in the African Finance Coporation (ACF) fund without proper authorisation.
The government at the centre has set up a team of investigators to probe the Apex bank’s investment in the corporation.The committee has three weeks to submit its findings to the government.It was also learnt that all the top shots in the bank would be quizzed on the matter.

Relatedly, the House of Representatives, last week, established an Adhoc Committee to institute an enquiry into the running of the Nigeria National Petroleum Coporation(NNPC) and the Department of Petroleum Resources(DPR) in the last eight years. The government, under Chief Obasanjo, it will be recalled, did not have a substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources as was the case in previous administrations. Obasanjo was Petroleum minister.Today, Umaru Yar’Adua, the president, is also the Minister of Energy.

The NNPC, during those years was administered by another loyalist of Obasanjo, Engineer Funsho Kupolukun.The reasons adduced by the House for the commencement of enquiries into the oil corporation was said to be the need to put the records straight and decipher why throughout the administration of Chief Obasanjo, the corporation’s account was not audited. A 26-man committee headed by Hon Igo Aguma is to look into the activities of the NNPC and DPR from 1999-2008 and furnish the House with all relevant documents to help its investigations.

According to Ubani,” the House, within the week set up an Adhoc Committee to probe the activities of the NNPC and DPR, but I will not neccesarily say the aim is to probe the organisations.A committee was named and members drawn from four committees of the House,whose oversight is related to the agencies.We decided to embark on the exercise because in the last eight years, nobody has seen audited accounts of NNPC, even though they claim to be carrying out audits of their operations”.

Next is Chief Bode George, former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) and former Chairman of the Nigeria Ports Authority(NPA). He is a core loyalist of the former President. He was his shadow and was in charge of the politics of the south west where he was godfather to the govenors who were very tight with OBJ.

Even before his friend and benefactor left office, there had been calls from certain quarters that George’s tenure at the NPA be examined in view of the illegal large scale fraud uncovered. The then Nuhu Ribadu-led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) had in the wake of calls for the trial of the retired Naval Officer, said it had not found anything incriminating against the Lagos State-born politician.

While Nuhu Ribadu himself is not under probe, many have not forgotten how bad they felt when he was pushed out of the EFCC and sent to the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) for a compulsory one-year course. While in office , Ribadu was the face of OBJ’s anti-corruption war as many corrupt governors, senators and civil servants were brought to the canvass. He was also able to bring to the Obasanjo government a lot of credibility even though many argued that he was selective in his crusade.

The aviation sector, where the enfant terrible of the Obasanjo government, Chief Femi Fani-kayode presided over, is also said to be one of the sectors pencilled down for probe.Plans are already afoot to probe the way he ran the ministry during the short period he was in charge. Kayode, while he was Obasanjo’s publicist, was a thorn in the flesh of politicians and government officials who were opposed to OBJ.The planned enquiry of the aviation sector during his tenure is seen in some quarters as pay back time for the Osun State-born politician.

In view of the on-going enquiries into the various sectors of the country’s economy during the period Chief Olusegun Obasanjo presided over the affairs of the country, analysts are of the opinion that the move is a covert attempt at probing the eight year reign of the Ota farmer. But the leadership of the House disagrees.

According to the Speaker, Hon Dimeji Bankole,”what we are doing is to put the records straight by unravelling some circumstances that led to the execution of projects, but we are not doing it to probe the former president.”

“The ongoing investigations into projects executed during the last administration is not targetted towards witch hunting anybody.It was also not targetted at the former president as it is being speculated. I am not sure whether this is a probe. The legislators are carrying out there oversight functions”, he submitted.