$22.3b Fraud: More Trouble For Jonathan, Wife As Code of Conduct Bureau, CCB Gets Involved

The Nation - Embattled ex-First Lady Patience Jonathan seems to have an hurdle to clear in her legal battle to reclaim the $22.3million in bank accounts linked to her.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has already placed the restriction on the accounts in Skye Bank while she battles in court to have the restriction lifted.

An application has now been filed at the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) to establish whether she declared the seized cash as required by law at the exit of her husband in 2015.

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Abuja-based lawyer, Barrister Osuagwu Ugochukwu who filed the application wants the bureau to come clean on whether ex-President Goodluck Jonathan declared the money to which his wife is now laying claims   in his exit form in 2015.

Ugochukwu in a September 1 letter to the Chairman of CCB, Mr. Sam Saba, said he was acting in the interest of the public and in the exercise of his rights pursuant to Sections 1 and 4 of the Freedom of Information Act 2011.

His words “On May 19 2015, the CCB, in an advertorial by its Acting Secretary, Kolade Omoyola, in some newspapers had reminded ‘political office holders to declare their assets on assumption and vacation of office in accordance with Paragraph II of the 5th Schedule of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended.’

“The Code of Conduct Bureau has asked President Goodluck Jonathan, his Vice, and 42 Ministers in his cabinet to declare their assets.

“The bureau reportedly issued the Completed Assets Declaration Forms to all concerned, with a 30-day deadline to return the completed forms before exiting office.

“Usually every public servant declares what the spouse earns and must have acquired as property or asset in their Spouses (public servant) declaration forms.

“This brings me to whether ex-president Goodluck Jonathan declared or completed his Exit Asset Declaration forms with the CCB.

“Only recently, as reported by Vanguard newspapers, former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, wrote a letter to the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) explicating that the $31.4 million connected to the financial fraud leveled against Mr. Waripamo Dudafa by EFCC was for the payment of the medical bills she incurred in London in 2013.

“Patience Jonathan claimed ownership of the $31.4 million in the affidavit before a Federal High Court in Lagos  September 2016.

“The former first lady in her letter to the Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu by her lawyers, Granville Abibo (SAN) and Co enjoined the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Skye Bank to lift the restriction placed on the accounts.

“In the letter, Patience Jonathan admitted that the she is the sole signatory to the accounts and the accounts were card-based.

“We note also that First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan was Permanent Secretary in the Bayelsa State Civil Service. Governor Dickson had in July 2012, five months after his inauguration appointed Patience Jonathan, as one of the 17 new permanent secretaries in the state civil service.

“The question that agitates me are: Whether this $31.5 million or $20 Million as being claimed by ex-President Jonathan’s wife was declared in May 2015 in President Jonathan Exit forms with the CCB?

“Kindly avail me whether ex-President Jonathan did file his Asset Declaration Form with the Bureau upon exit from office in May 2015?

“Did Dame Patience Jonathan declare her assets upon exit upon appointment as permanent secretary in Bayelsa State and upon her exit from same position?”

A special investigation team to Port Harcourt (Rivers State) and Yenagoa (Bayelsa State), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had linked nine choice properties, two hotels and a plot of land under construction to the ex-First Lady.

A report of the EFCC investigative team had implicated the former First Lady.

The report of the investigative team said in part: “Based on the investigation so far carried out, it has revealed that the four fraudulent VISA Platinum USD Card accounts used by Mrs. Patience Goodluck Jonathan  has a cumulative balance of $14,029.881.79 which has been swept Post No Debit Card category.

“Again, her personal account, different from the four fraudulent VISA Platinum USD Card accounts, bears the balance of $5,841,426.17.

Bayelsa Salary Debacle: Where Is Ben Bruce? By Goke Butika

"If we are in poverty, we can lie our way through, but we should elect not to embark on hypocrisy and conspiracy because of the consequence of death,"----Ifa panegyrics.

President Muhammadu Buhari while explaining the parlous state of economy in Nigeria pointed to the fact that 27 states of out 36 have difficulty in paying workers' salaries, ascribing the challenge to the crash of crude oil price and zero productivity, and it was widely reported in all dailies and electronic media.

Last week, an interesting headline seized front pages, that workers in oil rich Bayelsa state with eight Local Government council Areas were resorting to begging for survival as a result of delay in salaries close to six months. Whereas, Oyo state, one of the biggest states in the country has entered into a deal of placing all his allocations from the federation account for salaries alone in order to halt an imminent strike.

In a related development, while the nation's currency was taking plunge for US dollar, the President and his team became sleepless on the drama of death at the forex market, but Buhari appeared clever in this game of baiting as he extends the country's net of international engagement to the East, particularly China, the second economic super power of the world as against the pressure from the West on him to reduce the value of naira.

However, what appears to be troubling "Ajebamidele" is different from his son. While Ajebamidele was thinking of making more money for the family, the son wanted more food. While the President was losing sleep to fix the country in response to the cry of the millions, the representatives of the same people at the National Assembly were busy padding national budget with secret projects that would get them more money to make statement of "new arrival" on the political permutation of their states; don't ask me about the intention of top national assembly members who want to become governors in 2018/19 in their states.  At the same time, the Senate under the leadership of the embattled Senator Bukola Saraki was struggling to alter two bills: Code of Conduct Bureau/Tribunal (CCB/T) and Administration of Criminal Justice.

To the best of my knowledge, the first bill must be altered to help the Senate President who has run from frying pan to furnace with a view to evading  justice on his alleged criminal past at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, while the second bill must be quickly passed to return the snaily speed of justice which could make Saraki's case last eternity. And I found my justification in the words of Ekiti Senator-Ekiti again! Biodun Olujinmi, the impeached deputy governor to Ayo Fayose-Fayose again! She said: "If you don't help your neighbor when his house is burning, you will not get help when the fire reaches your house." In one piece,  the Senate of the Federal Republic has become "stock exchange market for corruption."

Yes, some critics have their misgivings about the China deal, but yours sincerely thumb up for it, because it makes sense to say that an import dependent nation like Nigeria must get its Maths right. We import over 80 percent of wares from China, but used US dollar to denominate the transactions, making the naira to be chasing the dollar that would later be changed to yuan, Chinese currency. In the exchange, naira gets weaker, dollar gets stronger. Now, with the new deal, Nigerian importer would exchange naira for Chinese yuan at rate of N30 for a yuan, the import would be done with ease; machinery for local industries would be procured at cheaper rate; while dollar would have rest from hot chase, and possibly relax and reflex on its hike, and the economy would be on its legs again. If I am wrong, let the economists fault my argument and come up with convincing one.

Let it be known that the narratives I have read about the other side of arguments against the China deal seem to be planted by the looters who had stocked looted dollars in their soak aways with a view to be selling it at higher rate for the benefit of their families alone. But the analyses above were not even the hit of this piece, the meat is to draw out the "common sense" Senator Ben Bruce who once mocked State of Osun on national media that he would be donating his wardrobe allowance to its workers in sympathy to their agitation on delayed salaries, that Bayelsa, his home state where he represents could not pay for ten months now at the Local Governments and six months at the state level, and common sense suggests that Bruce begins to release his jumbo salary to the workers there.

Today, Rauf Aregbesola, Governor of Osun who was their boot of jokes some months back while he declared that the nation's economic downturn has hit his state badly has found his template for fixing his remaining  projects, paying though not regularly, the reworked salaries known as "afusa" pejoratively means half salaries for some categories of workers, and enjoying his peace with work force in the state, while watching states with bigger allocations with "nosa" pejoratively means no salary with justifiable concern.

The long and short of my story is that Nigerians should know that we are in a dire strait, the country is in need of collective will and unalloyed support, and certainly the support for a better Nigeria would not come from the National Assembly, because the guys there want to be rich quick at the expense of the vulnerable citizens. So, it is high time we rose to support Nigeria project under President Buhari.

Butika is a journalist of intercontinental exposure.