The Nation Newspaper

Tag: ‘fraud’ allegation

  • Ekiti NLC, TUC disclaim fraud allegation

    The leaders of Organised labour in Ekiti State, yesterday denied the rumour that the state government had indicted some labour leaders for financial infraction allegedly committed during the immediate Fayose-led administration.

    The Trade Union Congress (TUC) and Nigerian  Labour Congress(NLC), warned those they described as rebels within the labour family to desist from depreciating past leaders of the unions to promote selfish agenda.

    The unions added that the past chairmen of the NLC, Comrades Ade Adesanmi and his counterpart in TUC, Odunayo Adesoye, were not indicted for alleged corruption, contrary to the position being peddled by mischief makers.

    The former labour chiefs had been alleged of colluding with the Fayose administration to appropriate N6 million monthly running grants to themselves and another N6 million quarterly running grants for their meetings.

    It was said that the former union leaders were investigated by a Panel of Inquiry headed by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Mr. Sunday Adebayo.

    At a press conference jointly addressed by the new Chairmen of NLC, Coms. Joshua Kolapo and TUC,  Sola Adigun, the duo, said it was saddening and unfortunate that a query issued to civil servants to explain some issues could be treated as an indictment.

     

    Kolapo, who described the negative propaganda being allegedly masterminded by some aggrieved members of the unions and their surreptitious moves to divide and weaken labour movements, said nothing would be spared to protect the integrity of the labour in the state.

    The TUC boss,  Adigun, added that the bodies will work hard to fortify labour centres in the state for workers and society at large not to suffer a serious backlash that would accompany a divided labour.

    “Our views that labour leaders should not be victimised was not an indication that we are supporting corruption.

    We frowned and condemned the leaked query,  since it didn’t emanate from government. The Labour family in Ekiti is one and united despite this”, he stated.

  • Fraud allegation rocks Nigeria’s LPG sub-sector

    The Nigeria Liquefied Petroleum Gas Association (NLPGA) is fighting an integrity battle to regain the confidence of its global body – World LPGA, the government and the public.

    This is coming after its planned fifth Africa LPG Summit 2018 scheduled for June 19 and 20 in Lagos failed as a result of alleged misappropriation of funds set aside for the summit.

    The botched summit would have been the first in Nigeria as the first and second summits were successfully held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2014 and 2015, the third in Tanzania in 2016, the fourth in Johannesburg, South Africa last year and the fifth in Nigeria but which eventually flopped.

    At a fact-finding stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos to discuss the issue, the members noted that there is a huge reputation challenge before them, which requires urgent solution.

    According to a report on the failed  Africa LPG Summit, members of NLPGA stated that the Association broached the idea of hosting the summit in Nigeria after South Africa and mandated the Executive Secretary of NLPGA, Mr. Joseph Eromosele to drive the planning and work with the acting Director of the LPG summit, Vincent Choy.  Eromosele was supposed to arrange visas for those coming from outside Nigeria as well as make arrangements for the speakers, pecial guests of honour, accommodations, exhibition and conference spaces.

    Unfortunately, the money paid by member-companies and affiliates of NLPGA for the venue, hotel accommodation of some VIPs, as well as cash transferred to Eromosele were allegedly diverted by him.

    NLPGA Deputy President, Mr. Felix Ekundayo, told the LPG stakeholders that the association discovered the fraud committed by Eromosele when the intending participants who paid could not access their bookings online and reported to the association’s executive.

    Ekundayo said the executives of the association at various meetings asked Eromosele about the summit, but he was always coming up with excuses. “When we heard about the issue, we constituted an emergency meeting. Eromosele was immediately cut off from all communications and all the platforms of the NLPGA, and sent out disclaimers,” he said.

    He noted that Eromosele had been suspended, and the case reported to the police, adding that the Special Fraud Unit of the Police would take up the investigation after required processes are completed.

    This was also confirmed by other top officials of the NLPGA.  Ekundayo further said $11,000 has been recovered from Eromosele so far.

    According to the report made available to The Nation, the organisers of the Africa LPG Summit, All Events Group Pte Limited, was working with Eromosele through Vincent Choy, who collected and transferred the money to Eromosele.

    The report also said Eromosele advised intending foreign participants to apply for a visa on arrival (VoA) and that they should submit applications of over 70 participants. “Up to the day of our flight, the 15th June 2018, the letter of approval for the visas was not issued and we were forced to cancel our flight.

    “We advised all the participants who had been relying on NLPGA to organise the VoA that they were not now going to be available, and we had no option but to cancel the event.

    “All the other exhibitors and speakers who were asked to apply for their own visas because they submitted their applications late were able to obtain their visas,” the report quoted the intending foreign participants as saying.

    The report also said the organisers noted that NLPGA President, Mr. Nuhu Yakubu, was unaware that the association had been working with them as a co-organiser.

    The report said: “The VIPs, including the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources whom Eromosele, has confirmed and asked us to pay for his accommodation, had no knowledge that the event was taking place.

    “Several other speakers who were confirmed by Eromosele to be on the agenda were also unaware they were on the agenda. We highly suspect that the executive secretary of the NLPGA was acting alone and that the visas were not submitted properly to the immigration office and all the planning for the event  we thought was in place, had not been done.

    “As a result, we were forced to cancel/postpone the event and suffer significant costs and claims from exhibitors for cancelled flights and other costs because they had been unable to travel.

    “Also, the funds which have already been transferred to Eromosele, the executive secretary of the NLPGA, are at this moment unaccounted for,” the report added.

    The vice president, eminent industry chiefs, such as the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), among others, said they were unaware of the summit, with all the loopholes in the planning, the summit was cancelled.

    The participants at the stakeholders’ meeting were not convinced by the presentations of the NLPGA executives, noting that they have failed for allowing an employee of the Association to drag its name and integrity in the mud nationally and internationally.

    The stakeholders agreed on setting up a five-man committee cutting across all the segments of the LPG sub-sector.They include Mr. Gbenga Falusi, Chairman, Jacob Wale Coker, Mr. George Ebubechukwu and Mr. Monday Nwatu.

    It was learnt that the money allegedly misappropriated by Eromosele ran into tens of millions of naira and the Singaporean,  Choy, who was working with him to facilitate the participation of foreigners at the summit, according to the stakeholders, was naïve to have placed his trust on just one individual (Eromosele) for the event. With multiple red flags happening throughout the organisation of the event, more due diligence should have been conducted and further clarification sought from the association.

    Choy, The Nation learnt has resigned as a result of the fraudulent transactions.

  • Group to Okiro: resign over fraud allegation

    Group to Okiro: resign over fraud allegation

    A pressure group, Access to Justice (AJ), has asked the chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC),  Mike Mbama Okiro, to resign following the findings of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission  (ICPC), which indicted the Commission of corruption and fraudulent activities to the tune of N133.4 million.

    In a statement in Lagos last week  by its Executive Director, Joseph Otteh and Okechukwu Nwanguma of the Network on Police Reforms in Nigeria (NOPRIN), the AJ said the indictment of the PSC by the ICPC was enough reason for the chairman of the Commission to vacate office.

    Access to Justice said the PSC “leadership has brought upon the Commission a huge credibility crisis and degraded its moral authority too much to be able to effectively hold police officers accountable for misconduct”.

    In view of this, the group contended that the findings made by the ICPC has reached the thresholds for demanding that the PSC chair vacates office immediately.

    “The Police Service Commission cannot be indulging in an entrenched pattern of malfeasance and misappropriations and remain positioned to discharge its constitutional mandate of fighting corruption or abuse of power within the police force or sanctioning police officers guilty of corruption or misconduct,”it argued.

    The group noted that the PSC is responsible for the disciplinary control of police officers and for ensuring that police officers comply with all police laws and regulations, including those on corruption.

    “Where the PSC cannot effectively perform its oversight disciplinary responsibilities, a huge disciplinary and control gap will be created within the Nigerian Police Force, which will, consequently, further entrench and facilitate systematic corruption within the institution.

    “The continuance of the present incumbent of the office of the Chairman of the Police Service Commission is, therefore, no longer tenable. It is in the best interest of the body and for the sake of preserving the PSC’s ability to effectively perform its constitutional duties, that we are, therefore, demanding that he vacates the office now,”AJ contended.

    The ICPC on August 11, ordered the PSC and its Chairman, to refund to the government treasury the sum of N133.4 million out of the N350 million it received from the Federal Government for the monitoring of the conduct of the 2015 elections following an investigation carried out by the commission based on a petition by Mr. Aaron Kaase, a staff of the PSC.

    The petition alleged acts of corruption, abuse of office and fraudulent acts to swindle the PSC to the tune of N275.5 million on the part of the chairman of the PSC.

    Access to Justice noted that the findings of the ICPC on the activities of the PSC revealed that “the Police Service Commission (PSC) received the sum of N350 million from the Federal Government to monitor the conduct of police personnel in the recently conducted general election.

    “The Commission budgeted to expend the fund on training and physical monitoring during the election. Investigation revealed that the Commission budgeted for training of 900 staff to conduct training in Abuja, Lagos and Kano. However, the entire staff force was not more that 391 and that was the figure actually trained in a programme held in Abuja only… “

    The group, in spite of having called for the resignation of PSC Chairman, Okiro, however, faulted the conclusion of the report of the ICPC on the investigation conducted into the commission.

    “Judging from the ICPC’s statement, it is fairly evident that, from the start, an intention to misappropriate funds was clearly incubated, set in motion, and manifested when the Commission projected to train 509 more staff than it actually had. In other words, the Commission received training monies for a large retinue of “ghost staff”.

    “Those preparatory steps were subsequently consummated: the Commission got taxpayers’ monies based upon the misrepresentations it made, and held on to the money that remained afterwards.

    “As the ICPC found, the Police Service Commission even knowingly paid its staff based in Abuja return air ticket money for a programme that held in Abuja; yet another fraud!

    “How these corrupt practices and deceptions could come to be characterised by the ICPC as merely “administrative in nature and within the ambits of career public servants handlings” is baffling,” AJ argued.

    The group recalled that in 2008, a former Minister and Senator were arraigned and prosecuted for failing to return unspent funds in their Ministries/Committees to the government’s coffers.

    “The ICPC’s working definition of criminal corruption sets our alarm bells ringing; it is clearly too flawed and deficit to help Nigeria’s war against corruption. If there were no criminal acts committed, it becomes open to question the business of the ICPC in ordering the PSC to refund money. The ICPC’s mandate, it may be said, extends only to the investigation and prosecution of acts that constitute corrupt practices,” the group said.

     

     

     

  • APC denies N4b ‘fraud’ allegation against Fayemi

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State has denied that former Governor Kayode Fayemi diverted N4 billion state funds.

    It described the allegation by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)  as laughable and an attempt to divert attention from alleged reports that Fayose took N720 million as salary and allowances for his unfinished first term.

    The PDP had, on Sunday, alleged that Fayemi diverted over N4 billion raised from workers’ deductions “for sharing from time to time in the APC secretariat in the four years that his administration lasted”.

    The umbrella party also claimed that the ‘deal’ was exposed during the workers’ verification exercise, claiming that it obtained the information from those ‘involved’.

    The APC said the PDP allegation was an afterthought and wondered why it took the ruling party eight months to come out with its story.

    It noted that Fayemi had challenged Fayose to probe him, if he (Fayose) had any  evidence against him (Fayemi).

    The party said Fayose and PDP’s resort to the “old practice of falsehood and blackmail” to divert Ekiti people’s attention from proven cases of sharp practices in governance won’t succeed.

    The APC challenged the governor to explain the N720 million salary bazaar and N650 million deducted monthly into the purse of an “election contractor”.

    In a statement yesterday by its Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatubosun, the party said the latest allegation from the ruling party came because it (APC) had put the Fayose-led government on the spot on the governor’s temerity to award himself N720 million  from his unfinished first term.

    He challenged Fayose to provide evidence by approaching anti-graft agencies or shut up and stop insulting the sensibilities of Ekiti people with banal and unsubstantiated allegations.

    Olatubosun said: “It is laughable that as much as N4billion was diverted and or embezzled by the Fayemi administration and Fayose is just knowing eight months after assumption of office, pretending that a kangaroo verification exercise had revealed this. This is better told to the marines!

    “Fayemi had earlier offered his administration for probe when Fayose started a similar campaign of calumny to cover up his tracks in financial mismanagement but the governor had no courage for such exercise because there was nothing to probe.

    “Fayose is at it again in his usual funny game to divert Ekiti people’s attention from his sharp practices in governance. This is an afterthought that exposes his ignorance and confusion. If Fayose  is sure of his facts, he should not waste time in taking his case to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    “There is no deduction anywhere. It is not possible. Even during the two years that federal allocations dwindled to N500 million, Fayemi was still paying salaries with governor-elect wrote to banks to stop it. So how was any deduction and diversion possible under that situation?

    “The biometric system was so transparent such that it did not allow ghost workers but since the PDP is now saying its government had detected 1,000 ghost workers, we are interested in unmasking the ghosts and we demand that the names of these ghosts be published,” he added.

    The APC spokesman said the governor and his party should approach the EFCC with their claim, including the list of workers used to siphon funds.

    He said Fayemi would be willing to defend his financial transactions.

    The APC spokesman urged the governor to show his development blueprint and achievements eight months in the saddle instead of engaging in lies, mindless private comfort and encouraging indolence and crimes among youths.