Nigeria Content Online

Nigeria has assumed Chairmanship of the
Commission of D-8 countries for two years, as it hosts the current 28th
Session of the Commission. The D-8 Commission comprises the developing
nations of Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Iran, and Pakistan, and aims at promoting economic growth and
development among member-countries.

The session, which opened yesterday,
had the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Martin
Uhomoibhi, representing the country as Chairman of Commissioners at the
opening ceremony. Mr Uhomoibhi lauded the achievements of the
Commission since inception in 1997, noting that “bilateral trade
relations are on the upswing among member-states”. He noted that the
achievements would be improved upon to include other areas of
development, as contained in the D-8 Roadmap.

Uhomoibhi said that under the chair of Nigeria, issues bordering on
Preferential Trade Agreement and harmonisation of visa regimes would be
addressed, in a bid to boost the contribution of members to global
trade, from 5 per cent or $1.2 trillion to 15-20 per cent by 2018.

The Economic
Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) has entered into a strong
agreement that will boost economic and political cooperation with the
South American country of Brazil.

ECOWAS leaders,
speaking at the end of a special summit of regional leaders and their
Brazilian counterpart in Sal, Cape Verde, at the weekend, said the two
parties agreed to focus their political initiatives on the promotion of
political dialogue, security collaboration, private sector
partnerships, improving infrastructure, capacity building, and cultural
exchange.

Speaking at the
opening of the maiden ECOWAS-Brazil Summit, ECOWAS chairman and
Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, identified the establishment of
a special fund to support the capital base of the ECOWAS Bank for
Investments and Development as one of the key outcomes of the summit.

“It is expected
that the proposals in the presentations will facilitate collaboration
between Brazil and the relevant institutions of the sub-region,
particularly our financial institutions, with an objective to set up a
special fund to support the capital base of the ECOWAS Bank for
Investments and Development. This will be a welcomed initiative in the
interest of our sub-region,” Mr. Jonathan said.

Mutual benefits

He said the
opportunities that will accrue from this summit and subsequent ones
range from collaboration in the areas of renewable energy,
infrastructural development, to combating organised crime and other
related matters such as illicit trafficking in small arms and light
weapons, and the illicit traffic in drugs.

The eight page
declaration, announced at the end of the summit, includes a desire to
improve capacities to cope with development challenges, as well as to
strengthen the political, social, and economic institutions, and the
process of peace and stability-building.

The meeting also
called for the urgent reform of the international financial system in
order to make it fair, just, and inclusive and enable developing
countries to be represented in the decision-making process of such
institutions.

The summit, a
follow-up to the Africa-South America Summit, held in Abuja in November
2006, agreed to progressively uphold and open free and fair trade and
investment opportunities through the promotion of two-way trade,
investment, and business development for their mutual benefit.

In order to give
expression to their proposed cooperation in the area of transport, the
parties agreed to “deepen … cooperation in the area of air transport
in order to improve regular air transport services between Brazil and
ECOWAS Member States.”

Consequently, they
directed the ECOWAS Commission and the relevant institutions in Brazil
to convene a meeting of their national aviation authorities to discuss
the modalities for such a cooperation, including the expansion of
existing air transport arrangements and the signing of new ones.

Both parties also
committed themselves to cooperate in the promotion of clean and
sustainable energy and to support the activities of the ECOWAS Centre
for Renewable Energy, which is based in Praia, Cape Verde.

The ECOWAS-BRAZIL summit was held a day after the 38th ordinary
session of the ECOWAS heads of state meeting in Sal, Cape Verde, that
was attended by all ECOWAS heads of state, except the two suspended
ones of Guinea and Niger Republic.

Government and
community officials have expressed worry over reports of persistent
oil-spill across the Niger-delta, Nigeria’s zone of oil exploration
activities. Oil-leakages and spillages of ranging quantity has been
reported in the last one month across the region, in states which
includes Bayelsa, Ondo,Akwa Ibom and Rivers.

At the weekend, an
association of 49 communities in the oil producing areas of Ondo State
called on the federal government to put in place a law that will make
it mandatory for all oil companies to always pay compensations to
victims of oil spills in the oil producing areas in the state. “Most
times when oil spills occurred, the oil companies always trade words
over which company is responsible for the spills,” said Wole Ogungbeje,
an official of one of the communities. “The spills always affect the
lives of the people of the area. Their water, farmland and fish are
always affected, living them at the mercy of these oil companies who
are avoiding their responsibilities.” He appealed to the state
government to compel the oil companies to visit communities in the
riverside area to access the extent of the effect of oil spills in the
affected area.

The Minister of Environment, John Odey, recently summoned officials
of ExxonMobil (parent company to Mobil Producing Nigeria) to a meeting
to discuss what the government said were a series of spills far
offshore, where militant attacks and sabotage are infrequent. Mobil has
also been at the heart of a controversy over recent spills in Akwa
Ibom. But the company said told NEXT that though there was oil spill in
Akwa Ibom, the volume was not as large as was reported. The company
also said it carries out its activities as a responsible corporate
citizen. “On May 1, a leak occurred in one of MPN’s offshore pipelines
more than 20 km offshore,” the company’s spokesperson, Nigel Cookey,
said. “MPN immediately isolated and depressured the line, shut in
production and notified regulatory authorities.”

The Conference of
Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP), on Sunday, asked the Inspector
General of Police, Ogbonnaya Onovo to ensure that the office of the
Deputy Governor of Bauchi State is opened to Garba Gadi to enable him
serve the people of the state.

It also asked Babayo Gamawa to stop parading himself as deputy governor following the return of Mr. Gadi.

The Bauchi High
Court recently ordered the reinstatement of Mr. Gadi, who was impeached
by the state’s House of Assembly last year.

Following his
reinstatement, Mr. Gadi went to the office, now occupied by Mr. Gamawa,
the former Speaker of the State Assembly, to work, but was denied
access.

The CNPP, in a
statement by its spokesperson, Osita Okechukwu, said Mr. Onovo should
direct the state police commissioner to open the office, as a matter of
urgent national importance, to enable Mr. Gadi resume work.

“CNPP position is
that the Commissioner of Police and indeed all security agencies in
Bauchi State must ensure that the court judgment which reinstated
Alhaji Garba Gadi as the Deputy Governor of Bauchi State; must be
obeyed to the letter and Alhaji Gadi’s security guaranteed,” the
statement said.

“Accordingly CNPP challenges the Executive Governor Bauchi State,
Isa Yuguda, as the Chief Security Officer of the state to come down
from the high horse and accept the reality posted by the court judgment
for the interest of peace and security of Bauchi State,” the group said.

There is nothing wrong with the fat
allowances the federal lawmakers get quarterly, newly-appointed
chairman of the House Services Committee, Yakubu Dogara, has said,
insisting that his colleagues deserve the reward, not only because of
the amount of work they do, but also because of the billions of naira
they have saved for the country.

Mr Dogara, whose committee oversees the
welfare of members as well as the budget and appropriation of the
House, said the National Assembly gets a mere 1.5 percent allocation of
the total federal budget yearly, and upbraided Nigerians, particularly
journalists, for raising issues pertaining to the allowances of the
lawmakers instead of asking questions on what the executive arm does
with the remaining 98.5 percent.

The members of the House have been
demanding an increment in their quarterly allowances from N27.2 million
each to N42 million, while the senators want theirs raised from N45
million to N80 million. If the demand sails through, each member will
get N168 million per annum, while each senator will take home N192
million.

“What I want to talk about is this
issue of allowances that they heard that members have been collecting
N27.2 million per head and senators N80 million. In fact, some media
houses have speculated that what we now earn is N42 million per
quarter. Now this quarterly payment has become an issue,” he said.

“I remember, even the agencies involved
in fighting corruption are raising issues, particularly media reports
suggest that the Chairperson of the EFCC once said that there is
corruption in the National Assembly. To this, my response has been that
what Nigerians forget is that the entire money in the allocation. If
you check the 2010 budget, the entire allocation to the National
Assembly is 1.5 per cent. Unfortunately, that is what most Nigerians
focus on. But do we ask questions from those managing the remaining
98.5 per cent? Have we asked questions?

“This parliament has done a lot, but
Nigerians do not appreciate because they do not even know what the
parliament has done. When we came in 2008, in the course of our budget,
we raised the allocation of the National Assembly from one per cent of
the total budget to 1.5 per cent that year; we saved over N450 billion
for the nation in unspent and un-remitted budgetary allocations. In
2009, more than N350 billion was paid back into the national treasury
as unspent funds. Now, if you sum the two, we are almost hitting a
trillion.”

Mr Dogara, who addressed journalists at
the weekend, also said Nigerians should rather be worried about what
happened to these unspent funds from 1999 to the time they came in, and
start insisting that MDAs should return unspent money at the end of the
year.

“What happened? How much would it have been? That is the investigation that I thought media houses would have done,” he said.

The lawmaker, who was until June 3 the
chairman of the House Committee on Customs and Excise, said though the
discovery of the unspent funds will not be used as justification,
Nigerians have enough issues to raise with the executive arm, which
manages most of the budget.

Holding back billions

The PDP member from Bauchi State also
said he wondered why Nigerians are not asking institutions that
generate revenue for government how much of this they hold back for
themselves.

“And then we talk about revenue
generating institutions of government where billions, if not trillions,
are generated and not remitted.

As a result of our oversight functions,
we have said, look there are limits that some these agencies can go,”
he said. “That those monies must be paid back into the government
treasury. Nobody has ever given us credit for that. We do not want to
use that as justification for whatever allowances that we collect but
certainly they are issues worth looking at.”

On the demand by the “progressives
members” for investigation into the finances of the House, Mr Dogara
said they did not avail themselves of its standing rules and other
extant laws, in making their demand.

“They should have recourse to the
resolutions of the House that was passed vis-à-vis the Rules of the
House and the provisions of section 24 of the Legislative Powers and
Privileges Act. But, unfortunately, that was not done,” he said.

“I have heard a lot of people allude to
the fact that Integrity Group had similar campaign against Patricia
Olubunmi Etteh when she was the Speaker and nothing happened to the
members of the Integrity Group; they were not suspended, but they first
went to the press.

“The appropriate response to this is that you cannot say you want to
steal because there was thief somewhere that has not been caught. Once
you know this is a rule, this is what we have adopted in the House,
therefore, whatever the House follows is there in the rules and nobody
has ever challenged it since we have been members in 1999.”

There are no plans
or directives for the reversal of the electronic payment system in
official transactions in the Federal Public Service, the Accountant
General of the Federation (AGF), Ibrahim Dankwambo, said in Abuja at
the weekend.

He was reacting to
reports that the government has reverted to the issuance of cheques for
certain categories of payments, particularly payment of pensions in the
federal civil service.

According to Mr.
Dankwambo, the benefits of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel
Information System (IPPIS), introduced in 2006 as part of reforms for a
computer-based payroll and personnel information system in the federal
civil service, have been so much that contemplating to reverse the
process would be ill-advised.

“I am not aware of
any such decision or directive for the stoppage of the policy. We have
seen the benefits of the IPPIS project designed to electronically
capture the data of workers in the federal civil service throughout the
country. Government has been saved billions of naira as a result, since
the introduction of the scheme, though it is still premature to say how
much .

“That is why
government will not hesitate to sanction any agency or organisation
that is brought to its notice tampering with the policy,” he said.

He said the
government has so far completed capturing the personal information data
of workers in at least 16 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs),
while local and international consultants have been shortlisted and
prequalified, preparatory to the full systems to roll out nationwide
from January next year.

Reports that the
government had jettisoned the policy and returned to issuing cheques
became rife last week during the ongoing data verification exercise for
federal pensioners holding across the 36 state capitals and the Federal
Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

Paid with cheques

Pensioners who
participated in the exercise were issued cheques at the end of the
verification, as against the e-payment system introduced last year,
where their entitlements were credited directly to personal accounts in
their respective banks, followed by text messages sent to notify them.

One frail-looking
old man, who spoke with NEXT at the verification centre in Abuja, was
embittered that the government did not consider the fragile conditions
of some of them before taking the decision, pointing out that most of
them can hardly withstand the rigours of travelling long distances and
having to endure the harassment in long queues while waiting to present
the same set of documents always presented each time the exercise is
held.

But an official
involved in the exercise, who asked to remain anonymous, last Thursday,
explained the rationale behind the verification exercise, which has
been held at least six times in the last four years. “From time to
time, there is need to update the records of pensioners in the service.
It is natural to expect that some of the pensioners would die. But,
often, the relations of some of these pensioners would not report the
death to the relevant authorities, while government continues paying
their benefits. To help update government data and records for proper
planning, it is compulsory that all pensioners appear physically for
the verification, irrespective of who is involved,” he said.

Government’s
e-payment policy has been widely acknowledged as a positive step to
stem corruption, reduce administrative hostage-taking associated with
payment to individuals and contractors, as well as facilitate a more
transparent payment system that allows for effective monitoring.

The previous arrangement, where pensioners were paid with cheques
was fraught with abuses, as corrupt government officials exploited the
system to siphon public funds through ghost workers and pensioners.

Gunmen, suspected
to be kidnappers, who, last Wednesday abducted Rufai AbdulMalik Atta,
nephew of the former Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Atta, are
asking the family for a ransom of N50 million before they release the
hostage.

Mr Atta, who
retired as Deputy General Manager with the defunct Bank of the North,
had just returned from his Okene home when he was apprehended in front
of his friend’s residence at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Family sources said that the former banker had arrived at his friend’s
house for an appointment when, on arrival, he was confronted by gunmen
who swooped on him and bundled him and a guard who had come to open the
gate, into a waiting car and sped off.

The sources added
that Mr Atta pleaded with the kidnappers to release the guard on the
grounds that he is ‘innocent’, and should be let go, to which the
gunmen obliged.

NEXT learnt that
the kidnappers opened a line of discussion with Mr Atta’s wife late
Thursday night and demanded N50 million ransom as condition to setting
her husband free.

The woman was said
to have pleaded with them for leniency and, by the weekend, the
abductors sliced it to N35 million, asking the embattled woman to get
across to them on a ‘dedicated account number’, the sum of N1 million
as the cost of taking care of her husband pending the full payment of
the ransom.

The Ebira ethnic
community in Kano, where Mr Atta is known for community participation,
also organized a special prayer for God’s intervention in the matter.

Hoping for early release

A family source
said Mrs Atta left Kano for Abuja yesterday morning after “a deposit of
half a million naira was paid by the family to the ‘dedicated
account’.” “One of the kidnappers called back to acknowledge receipt of
the funds but warned of dire consequence if the family fails to
expedite action on the ‘real deal’,” the source said. “He may regain
his freedom soon, as we have a reached a compromise with the
abductors.”

The police in Kano,
however, said they have not received any complaint over the incident.
The state police boss, Baba Muhammad, said the case might have been
reported where the incident occurred.

Efforts to get the reaction of the former Inspector General of
Police, Ali Atta, proved abortive, as several calls to his phone went
unanswered.

About two years after foreign law enforcement agencies slammed punitive fines in the US and Germany on Siemens for bribing officials of foreign countries – including Nigeria – to secure contracts, no Nigerian has been prosecuted.

As
Nigerian law enforcement agencies engage in what appears to be an
everlasting investigation of government officials indicted abroad for
corruption, one country, the United States, is busy raking in massive
revenue on account of Nigeria’s dereliction.

Nigeria’s bribery
misfortune has so far generated over N300 billion (approximately $2
billion) in revenue for the United States government, from fines it
imposed on companies which bribed Nigerian officials to corner
government contracts. Our analysis of the three current major
international bribery scandals (Siemens, Halliburton/TSKJ, Daimler)
involving Nigerian officials, indicates no traction or indictment from
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the agency that
leads investigations relating to economic and financial crimes.

This
finding also coincides with the release of a business survey on crime
and corruption in our country, which indicates that Nigerians have
“little trust in anti-corruption authorities.”

The report is a
collaboration between the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the European Union
(EU), and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“It
is hard to have any confidence in these agencies, and all these endless
investigations point at nothing but a case of dereliction, and probably
collaboration, or both,” said Jiti Ogunye, a leading public interest
lawyer in Lagos, who wondered angrily “how come that 19 years after
Siemens, (the Germany-based multinational electrical firm) agreed to
pay fines to both the US and German authorities for bribing officials
of foreign countries – including Nigeria – to secure contracts, no
Nigerian has been prosecuted?”

Another attorney, Abuja-based Charles
Musa, said if the US government is fining its own citizens, and its
companies, it is unfortunate that Nigeria, where all the bribery took
place, be it Anammco or Halliburton, is just grandstanding and playing
to the gallery, and not serious about prosecuting its citizens.

“In
a proper country, those companies should have been fined themselves,
and they’ll be blacklisted. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have the
political will to prosecute any crime in this country as long as it
doesn’t involve a poor man. These people are well known, they (their
names) are on the Internet, they are in US court papers, and nothing
has happened to them. It is unfortunate,” he said.

US revenue

The
revenue made by the United States represents fines paid by bribe
givers: Siemens, Kellogg Brown & Root, Technip and Daimler AG, to
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of
Justice in settlement agreements, for giving kickbacks to Nigerian
officials in exchange for multibillion dollar contracts. And by the
time investigations are completed in the $182 million Halliburton
bribery scandal, which has so far yielded $917 million dollars for the
U.S. government, the country is likely to rake in an additional N68
billion (approximately $449million) in fines from a former Halliburton
executive Albert Jackson Stanley, two United Kingdom citizens, Jeffrey
Tesler and Wojciech Chodan, and ENI of France, a member of the infamous
TSKJ consortium.

Already, Mr Stanley has been sentenced to seven
years in jail and he is to pay $10.8 million in restitution. Tesler and
Chodan, who allegedly coordinated the elaborate bribery scheme on
behalf of the TSKJ consortium, have also been indicted by a federal
grand jury in Houston and might forfeit $132 million to the American
government.

Investigations into ENI’s involvement in the bribery
scheme is still ongoing but in anticipation of its indictment, the
company has already set aside 250 million euro, an amount it plans to
deploy in a settlement agreement with the SEC and the Department of
Justice.

America has accused the company of violating its Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids “certain classes of persons and
entities to make payments to foreign government officials to assist in
obtaining or retaining business.”

Unwilling Nigeria

But
while the U.S. is prosecuting its citizens involved in the scams and
compelling concerned companies to pay huge fines, Nigeria, where the
offences were committed and whose citizens received the bribes, has
failed to properly investigate the cases and punish those involved.

“What
that means is that Nigerian laws and institutions are not working and
we are paying dearly for that,” said Bunmi Aborisade, an adjunct
professor at the State University of New York. “If those fines had been
paid to our country, it would have gone a long way in alleviating
poverty among our people. But that is even if the fine proceeds are not
stolen again.”

Siemens was the first to enter into a settlement
agreement with the SEC and the American justice department. On December
12, 2008, in a charge brought against it in a US District Court for the
District of Columbia, the German company agreed to pay $350 million in
disgorgement to SEC and a $450 million criminal fine to the justice
department.

The company had earlier paid fines of 395 million Euro
(approximately $569 million) and 201 million Euro(approximately $285
million) to the office of the Prosecutor-General in Munich, Germany,
over the same charge that it bribed Nigerian officials to corner four
telecommunication contracts.

When Siemens first entered into these
plea agreements, the Nigerian government blacklisted it and suspended
it from handling government contracts. But the Umaru Yar’Adua
administration soon lifted the suspension, saying the company had
repented. The company did not pay any fine and nobody was prosecuted
for the crime.

Two months later, in February 2009, Kellog Brown and
Root parted with $177 million and $402 million in payments it made to
SEC and the department of justice for its role in the bribing of
top-level Nigerian officials in exchange for the contract to build our
$6 billion Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas plant.

The two U.S.
agencies then went after German automaker, Daimler, and got it to cough
out a total $185 million in fines to settle charges that it compromised
Nigerian officials to award several vehicle supply contracts to it.

With
the announcement on Monday that Technip, a member of the TSKJ
consortium, had agreed to pay $338 million for its role in the bribery
of Nigerian officials, America’s total earning from enforcement
proceedings in the $182 million Halliburton bribery scam alone now
stands at $917 million (approximately N138 billion).

“The
resolutions announced today demonstrate once again the department’s
commitment to aggressively investigate and prosecute international
bribery by U.S. and foreign corporations alike,” the justice
department’s Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Mythili
Raman, said in a statement. “The fact that Technip now must pay
criminal penalties and civil disgorgement totalling $338 million should
make clear that, in the end, bribery of foreign officials will have
consequences.”

Not finished

Yet the Americans
are not finished. ENI, another member of the TSKJ consortium, is being
investigated and both SEC and the Justice department are likely to file
separate charges against the company before long. The fourth member of
the TSKJ Consortium, JGC Corporation of Japan, may, however, escape
U.S. sanctions because it is not listed in the New York Stock Exchange.
It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The U.S. authorities said
it was determined to bring to book all those involved in bribing
foreign officials in exchange for business favours.

“The FBI is
committed to pursuing those who disrupt the level playing field to
which companies in the U.S. and around the world are entitled,” said
FBI Assistant Director Kevin L. Perkins. “This case (Technip’s)
demonstrates the FBI’s commitment to aggressively investigate
violations of this law. We will continue to investigate FCPA matters by
working in partnership with other law enforcement agencies, both
foreign and domestic, to ensure that both corporations and executives
who bribe foreign officials in return for lucrative business contracts
are punished.” Analysts say while America’s FBI and SEC are matching
words with action, Nigeria’s EFCC, responsible for the Nigerian end of
the investigation, is running round in circles and barking without
biting.

Not lifting a finger

“It is quite
unfortunate and pathetic that foreign countries have brought to justice
those who have engaged in bribery while doing businesses in Nigeria,
while Nigeria, the victim of these corrupt practices, has not lifted a
finger in such despicable acts against the country,” said Bukola
Oreofe, executive director, Nigeria Liberty Democratic Forum, a New
York-based pro-democracy group.

“One can only leave to the
imagination the number of schools, hospitals, roads, agricultural
development, avoidable deaths that would have been averted if Nigeria
had been protected from this fleecing or if the country, through her
own criminal statutes, could bring the local and foreign perpetrators
to justice.

“If the United States can earn millions from such punishment, it is sad that Nigeria looks the other way,” Oreofe said.

Idris Akinbajo and Elor Nkereuwem contributed to this report.