Okoi Obono-Obla, a lawyer and Chairman of the Special Presidential Investigation Panel on Recovery of Public Property (SPIP), thinks that too many intrigues and general disinterest by top government officials in prosecuting a genuine anti-corruption war led to loss of chances for recovery of billions of dollars which the current administration can still pursue towards implementing various ambitious development projects. He spoke with Assistant Editor, JIDE BABALOLA in Abuja.
You alleged that despite many official statements about fighting corruption, many officials in the Buhari administration did not fully subscribe to such idea. Why did you conclude so?
It was mere lip service. In the first place, the Attorney-General was never interested. The Attorney-General who was supposed to be the Commander in Chief in the fight against corruption was half-hearted and ambivalent. So, how can you really fight corruption?
Presently, what would you say about the possibility of identifying places where the Tinubu administration can easily recover considerable sums of diverted monies towards the prosecution of developmental projects?
There are many. For instance, take the case that I did regarding the Tumsa brothers – Musa and Tijani Tumsa. Tijani Tumsa was the first interim National Secretary of APC and the brother, Musa was a powerful director in the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing. Acting on a petition, my team went to his house, a warehouse, and we discovered more than eighty brand new armour-plated (bulletproof) Mercedes Benz S-Class cars and other vehicles and motorcycles – those types of power bikes that Boko Haram was said to be using. Lots of them.
So, we commenced investigations, wrote to the Federal Inland Revenue Service to find out if they paid tax, they answered in the negative. I also wrote to Customs and Excise, to know whether they paid Customs duties. No! Then you begin to wonder how they acquired these properties. There were also farms and houses. Then, I went to the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, got an order of interim injunction for forfeiture of these properties pending investigations. By a memo, the court order was made known to the Attorney-General that this is what we have done.
Then, they started fighting back, one would have expected that the Attorney-General would be interested but the Attorney-General was never interested. They went to court to set aside the interim injunction, it was refused and they went on appeal and the Court of Appeal said that the panel did not have power to do that and we went to the Supreme Court. The matter was still in the Supreme Court until when I got removed and nobody in government showed interest despite the fact that I wrote to the President and the Attorney-General was aware.
But nobody was interested. I was just left alone, I did not have structures, I was just struggling. Even though I was asked to apply for a prosecutor from the Federal Ministry of Justice, I wrote to the Attorney-General and he referred me to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the DPP declined, saying they do not have lawyers to help the panel. There were hurdles placed in my path, in the path of my work. So, that was part of reasons why I went to President Buhari to say that I want to leave because nobody was ready to support me.
There was also a matter at the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) where they were investigating the misappropriation of some funds given to NFF by FIFA. About $500, 000 and some persons in NFF claimed that they used it to organize an international an international friendly football match between Nigeria and Bolivia. So, I wrote to Confederation of African Football (CAF) office in Cairo and they said that no, there was nothing like that. The CAF Secretary-General in Cairo said that there was nothing like that.
There was pressure on me – tremendous pressure! Even from the Attorney-General’s office. Someone from Kebbi state also said that I was harassing and investigating him and that it was not good, that people in the Attorney-General’s state (Kebbi) would think that he was not in charge. But I told him that the petition was written by some serious rival group in NFF and that if I do what he was suggesting, they would think that I had collected money. So, I charged him to court and later on, after I was removed, the matter was dropped by the Attorney-General’s office.
There were so many other cases! These included one that was reported to me by the then Artistic Director of the National Theatre, Comrade Tar Uko concerning the misappropriation of funds by some officials. I investigated and there was pressure from everywhere. Later on, they wrote to the Attorney-General and he dropped the charges. After I was removed, the Prosecutor from ICPC who was working with me was dismissed. They wanted him to indict me but he did not cooperate. He later went to court and the court said that his dismissal was wrong. There were all sorts of challenges.
What were the issues that your panel had against oil companies and commercial banks?
The oil companies that were not paying royalties to government? Mobil got an oil bloc and my attention was drawn to it by a leading Lagos-based human rights lawyer. He stated that Mobil had not paid fully for the oil bloc that they purchased while Goodluck Jonathan was President. The oil bloc was $2. 5 billion but they paid only $600 million; so, I was trying to recover the balance. A lot of pressure was brought on me. Someone was sent to compromise me but I refused. Then, I requested for records from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the NNPC but there was no record for complete payment of that money. But when I was removed, the investigation was truncated by the people from the Attorney-General’s office who were asked to take over from me.
Also, the commercial banks had done all sorts of illegal deductions when the Federal Government had accounts with them (before the introduction of Treasury Savings Account policy). Among others, we stumbled upon $250 million lodged at Heritage Bank, allegedly in the name of NNPC. We went to court to recover the money because we were saying why would you keep $250 million in a bank when the President had had directed that accounts being ran by departments and parastatals should be closed and transferred to the Central Bank? We asked: why were you keeping this money?
They couldn’t explain, they just said that CBN Governor permitted them. I went to the Central Bank Governor, Emefiele, he said: “Oh, Obla, do you know that this bank had been taken over by the Federal Government and that if they pull out this money, the bank will collapse, so we should allow them”. Because of that, I went to the Federal High Court to get an order but they now made a request that we should settle the matter. The court ordered that they should be paying in installments. By the time I left, they had paid about $180 million into government coffers but I do not know what happened thereafter.
What quantum of funds do you think that the Tinubu administration can go after and in which places are they likely to be?
There is Forensic Assets Investigation and Recovery Services LLC (FAIR), a United States company that is an international recovery agency. They wrote to me as chairman of the Special Presidential Investigation Panel on Recovery of Public Property (SPIP) panel that they have authentic information and documentary evidence of $60 billion which are proceeds of stolen crude oil deposited in a Texas bank in the United States.
They also said that they have documentary evidence, including account numbers, of the sum of $10 billion also stashed in a Texas bank by a former National Security Adviser in a previous administration.
Because of the magnitude of these, I had to write to President Buhari about the information that has been placed at my disposal and I asked that he authorize me to work with these people for recovery of these monies. The letter was sent to the presidential villa and acknowledged as being officially received. I also made a copy to the Attorney-General and no action was taken!
When I had issues with the Attorney-General, my wife decided to go and see him. But sarcastically, he said that I claimed that within three to five months, I can recover this $60 million. Yes, if they give us the mandate, we can recover the $60 billion for Nigeria within three to six months. But how can I recover it when they will not allow us do so? So, you can see the intrigues that some people were not happy with my little efforts and they had to frame me up and suspend me from office based on phantom allegations.