Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!! The thief Soludo has been caught!!!!!!!!

While the saints who are probing Soludo e.g the AGF who has served for just 13 Months has just bought a 100million Naira property in Abuja.


It is not rocket science to figure out why the country has been this successful.

I can see the aim of this attack on soludo is to remove him and introduce your village man as CBN governor,  So that Una go steal all the external reserve. People should stop this tribal thing. How many yoruba man Obasanjo put in power please name, this idea I come to power and I put all my village people in power is wrong.

Dem go tire. Soludo will out-live all of them, including all these envious and hate-filled nairalanders.

While the saints who are probing Soludo e.g the AGF who has served for just 13 Months has just bought a 100million Naira property in Abuja

where is your source?

McKren:



While the saints who are probing Soludo e.g the AGF who has served for just 13 Months has just bought a 100million Naira property in Abuja.

Good atleast you agreed that Soludo is a thief. $17mil = 1.7billion naira.


So lets get rid of this confirmed thief and we can follow-up on the next one.

Nigeria1,

People should stop this tribal thing. How many yoruba man Obasanjo put in power

this statement is an example of whats wrong with Nigeria.
where in my post did I mention anything tribal??

landis:

Good atleast you agreed that Soludo is a thief. $17mil = 1.7billion naira.


So lets get rid of this confirmed thief and we can follow-up on the next one.

Nigeria1,

this statement is an example of whats wrong with Nigeria.
where in my post did I mention anything tribal??

I think you need to go to your primary school teacher to remind you the meaning of sarcasm.

Its not enough to paint all those who tried to make a difference in the last administration black

What has this administration achieved ?? from the AGF, to the SGF, to the Finance Minister to the FCT Minister.

There is no gain including the President because we dont have one.

what is the job description of soludo? and what has he done so far? i'm just curious

When you begin to demonise those who oversaw the stabilization of our banking system and ask about whether he has done anything its not difficult to figure out where this is headed to.

Who is the current Finance Minister? do majority of Nigerians even know his name? let alone his achievement

Look, you don't need to re-write history to get Soludo fired. The President can go ahead and do it like he does with the others. All this Soludo this, Soludo that is unnecessary.

We are in digital age, everyone knows the truth. Every serious minded Nigerian can see the troubling pattern developing which is simply nothing but destroying those who tried to make a difference while doing nothing yourself.

From Ribadu, to El-Rufai to Soludo - - - -  the pattern is developing

Go and ask the President to Fire Soludo through your already established channels.

i was right with you till you mentioned El-Rufai. you must be drunk.

McKren:


Go and ask the President to Fire Soludo through your already established channels.

My post is not about firing of Soludo.  who cares??

It is about how this guy cannot account for $300mil.(15billion naira)

It is about how due to his fraudulent action with Elumelu caused $15mil fine for UBA in USA.

It is about how new breed of 'expert thieves' now in the process of killing nigeria.

It is about how he used $17mill to rent office in Lagos.

The fact they he asked Nigeria Banks to raise capital to N25billion each does not mean we should close eyes and he steal Nigeria dry.

if its then Gowon should be 'King of Nigeria' for saving us from destroying ourselves. OBJ should be 'Baba of Nigeria' for keep so much foreign Reserves.

it makes no sense to fire a man who has done a great job cleaning our messy banking system. allow the man to complete what he has started.

landis (m) I was not refering to you. You see some powerful propagada machine is out there now, what they are doing is remove anyone and anything from the southern Niger Benue of Nigeria and replace them with people of Northern Niger benue. Which is wrong. If you want to build a country go ahead and stop, tribal politics. What would they leave for Nigerian.

Nigeria1,,:

landis (m) I was not refering to you. You see some powerful propagada machine is out there now, what they are doing is remove anyone and anything from the southern Niger Benue of Nigeria and replace them with people of Northern Niger benue. Which is wrong. If you want to build a country go ahead and stop, tribal politics. What would they leave for Nigerian.

Ok but no matter what Soludo has shown he's a shady character.

If you have no skeleton, nothing can be fashioned against you.

On another hand, I understand Soludo; how much is salary of CBN governor?. So he steals like everyone else.

On another hand, I understand Soludo; how much is salary of CBN governor?. So he steals like everyone else

That sums up the objective of this thread. The message is pretty clear

McKren:


That sums up the objective of this thread. The message is pretty clear

and what is this objective which clear?

Saharareporters has learned that when the panel set up by Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa to investigate AFC ordered that the corporation’s funds be remitted into the Federal Government account with JP Morgan, Professor Soludo became incensed. He wrote a nasty letter telling the panel that only he could dictate the terms under which the funds would be placed in the escrow accounts at JP Morgan

One source told Saharareporters that, without outside meddling in the investigation, the panel was certain to recommend that the CBN governor be prosecuted for fraud and money laundering. “But the fear is that the panel may be sabotaged by powerful interests within the Umaru Yar’adua regime,” added the source.

“Professor Soludo has gained solid ground in Aso Rock to frustrate the panel's work,” said another source within the Presidency. “He has reached out to several players in government. He has used his considerable wealth to line up such allies as Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro, the Secretary to the Federal Government, Baba Gana Kingibe, and Turai Yar'adua.”

Soludo has reportedly budgeted $9 million to bribe his way out of trouble. He has made a $4 million commitment to Mrs. Turai Yar'adua, the highly influential “First Lady.” Mr. Aondoakaa has agreed in principle to accept $3 million in exchange for facilitating the scuttling of the panel’s report. Another $2 million has been budgeted to persuade the panel members to tailor their final report in a manner that exonerates the CBN governor of financial wrongdoing. Soludo has himself proposed that the panel adopt a middle of the road position by recommending the sacking of the AFC management led by Mr. Austine Ometoruwa. In the meanwhile, Soludo would be cleared of any wrong doing—if things work as planned.

reall ? Oga Mike go set panel wey go do wetin im no like?

Missteps against Soludo, AFC
By FRANK NDU NDIBE
Monday, May 19, 2008


There is no pretense that there is a concerted effort by some people to get rid of Nigeria ’s uncommon Central Bank Governor, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo. The campaign is looking increasingly like a kind of war where no prisoners are taken. In keeping with the belief that all is fair in war, a section of the media seems to have been snared.

Consequently, propaganda has been given a free reign in the media. Take three recent reports published in some of the leading national media. On Sunday, May 11, 2008, The Guardian reported in the front page lead story what it called the six major headaches of President Umaru Musa Yar”Adua.

Chief of the worries, according to the paper, is Nigeria ’s investment of 462 million dollars in the African Finance Corporation (AFC), which commenced operations only last November. The same day, The Nation reported that the investment should not have been made without a treaty which the country must first ratify since the AFC is an international institution.

Three days earlier, The Independent screamed in a banner headline that the probe panel investigating whether due process was followed in the equity investment had indicted the CBN Governor in a report which it claimed had been submitted to the government. But two days later the Attorney General and Minister of Justice issued a statement categorically denying that a report on this matter had been submitted, arguing that the panel cannot indict anyone since it has no judicial powers. The Independent also falsely claimed that the president of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has withdrawn from the AFC board.

It is self-evident that what is going on against Prof Soludo in the name of journalism is no journalism at all, but sheer campaign. Unless in the unlikely scenario that the editors of these papers are themselves involved in the propaganda war, they should have exercised discretion in publishing the reports by their correspondents, let alone giving them so much prominence.

One of the reporters who filed a story cited above the week before had alleged that Prof Soludo asked the probe panel to excuse his aides from watching the proceedings of the panel, and when they left he implored the panel to have pity on him because he is a young man whose mistakes should be forgiven! This fictitious report is not fit to be printed by a newspaper which prides itself as the flagship of the Nigerian press.

Perhaps the publication of this inelegant report emboldened the reporter to make the fantastic claim that Nigeria ’s equity investment in the AFC was unilaterally made by the CBN Governor. Not even the crassest of Prof Soludo’s critics has ever gone this far in the smear campaign. The critics are charitable enough to acknowledge that he received presidential approval during the time of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as Nigeria’s president to make the investment, as required by the Act setting up the CBN and outlining its functions and duties. In fact, they do not deny that a technical committee to look into the establishment of the Africa Finance Corporation was set up in December, 2006, and among the members was the present Minister of Finance, Dr Shamsudeen Usman, then the Deputy Central Bank Governor. This committee was given the widest publicity in the national media.

What Soludo’s critics are alleging is that the ever innovative CBN Governor ought to have obtained in writing the approval of Alhaji Umaru Yar”Adua who succeeded Chief Obasanjo in office. They have never alleged that Soludo acted all alone. It is, therefore, a conundrum that a respected paper would claim in a front page lead story that Prof Soludo “unilaterally” made the investment. Much as the critics’ position is respectable, there abound many people who do not consider obtaining in writing the new president’s approval necessary because the government everywhere is a continuum or is in what lawyers call perpetual succession.

Whether the new president’s consent in writing was obtained or not prior to the investment is, in my humble opinion, not a big deal. The big deal is that a new institution capable of promoting capital intensive infrastructure projects in especially Sub Sahara Africa has been borne. The AFC looks like a child prodigy. Established just last November and with headquarters in Lagos, it is already financing mega infrastructure in Lagos and Rivers States, as well as the development of the huge coal deposits in Kogi State . It is also developing stupendous infrastructure in Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau. These are projects which have for years not been able to attract the attention of the African Development Bank, to say nothing about the International Finance Corporation in Washington DC . Could either the ADB or the IFC assist Nigeria with a $2.8b facility in the development of its crisis-ridden electricity sector within a very short period as the government is asking the AFC to do?

The suggestion in The Guardian report that there is something untoward about government involvement in the establishment of the AFC, a private sector enterprise, could arise from insufficient knowledge of the emergence and growth of big enterprises in especially emerging economies. Government’s promotion of such enterprises is very common in those countries fondly called the Asian tigers. Here in Nigeria there is the example of the phenomenal success of Orient Petroleum Company in Anambra State which is starting oil production and refining of petroleum products this year.

It is a private sector led business. Orient Petroleum was promoted by the state government which not only invested substantially in it but also went to the extent of convincing people like Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth; Dr Alex Ekwueme, erstwhile Nigeria ’s Vice President; and Chief Arthur Mbanefo, Nigeria ’s ex ambassador to the United Nations, to serve on its board. Without the state government’s deep involvement, there is no way Orient Petroleum would have succeeded far ahead of all the companies licensed along with it some five years ago.

In the report published in The Nation already mentioned above, questions were raised about whether Nigeria ratified a relevant treaty prior to the $462m equity investment in the AFC. If such a treaty was indeed needed, should the CBN Governor be blamed for the legal oversight when the then Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Chief Bayo Ojo (SAN), was involved in the entire process?

The hysteria in a section of the media against Prof Soludo over Nigeria ’s $462 equity participation in the AFC is simulated. In the frenetic anti-Soludo publications, an unconscionable and determined effort is made to kill the AFC without an alternative vision of an institution to make Africa leapfrog. The directive by the probe panel that Nigeria ’s investment be withdrawn immediately and kept in an escrow account is a misstep against Soludo and the grand vision to fasttrack sub-Saharan Africa ’s development through the AFC. It is another sad story for Nigeria and Africa . If we continue in this direction, Africa may lose the 21st Century more calamitously than it lost the 20th Century. How long shall we remain in this mess?



http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/opinion/2008/may/19/opinion-19-05-2008-002.htm

Soludo, AFC and the new Abuja mafia
By Etim Etim

VERY few Nigerians in the financial industry and political establishment are ignorant of the true intent of Michael Aondoakaa, the attorney general of the federation and minister of justice, when he set up a panel recently to investigate if the Central Bank's investment in Africa Finance Corporation was authorised. We have always known, even before the naira denomination drama last year, that the attorney general wants Professor Charles Soludo, the CBN governor disgraced out of office. He will therefore do anything, including throwing the kitchen sink, as the Americans put it, at the professor.

How could the attorney general of the federation expect that a Central Bank governor would invest $450 million in a project without appropriate authorisation? Even if Soludo were not a first class econometrician (by the way, I know him because we were both undergraduates at the same time in the same university), he could not have contemplated deploying such resources in a bureaucracy as huge as CBN without requisite approvals. Aondoaka's inquiry is therefore ill motivated and filled with mischief.

President Yar'Adua will be right in calling for the dismantling of this panel, much so because he was misled into endorsing it. The AGF has embarrassed the country and the AFC as an international institution initiated by the country and subscribed to by several other African countries. The fact that the AFC is spearheading investment in the electricity sub-sector, President Yar'Adua's core agenda, makes the attorney general's move all the more intriguing. I know a bit about the AFC and the ideals that informed its formation. In my article entitled, Africa Finance Corporation: An idea whose time has come published on this page last August, I argued that the Yar'Adua administration should also work with the Corporation in providing the urgently needed infrastructure and amenities in the country. What the AGF is doing could imperil such a relationship.

From all I know, the CBN investment in AFC was duly authorised. In late 2005, President Olusegun Obasanjo constituted a Presidential Technical Committee under the supervision of the CBN to work out the modalities for setting up AFC. On January 14, 2006, the president authorised the CBN ", to take all necessary steps and lead the process" of setting up the corporation. On February 7, 2006, the Technical Committee was inaugurated with Professor Soludo as Chairman. Members were Dr. Shamsudden Usman; Deputy Governor (operations), now finance minister; Tunde Lemo, Deputy Governor (Financial Services Surveillance); Chris Edordu, former President Afrexim Bank; Dr. Seyyid Abdulahi, (former Director General, OPEC Fund); Dr. Oba Fajana, former World Bank economist and former Head, Governance Division of Africa Development Bank. There were also a representative of Federal Ministry of Finance, a representative of Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria and notable personalities like Aliko Dangote, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, Tony Elumelu, M.A Alao and Cecilia Ibru.

On March 24, 2007 the CBN Governor wrote to the President, informing him of the CBN's plan to invest up to $490 million in the event of the Nigerian private sector not being able to take up the entire equity and seeking approval for the following documents: the draft headquarters agreement, the draft charter and the draft agreement. On May 24, 2007 the President minuted thus: "Approved for immediate execution and implementation" and directed the memo to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Minister of Justice, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Finance and the CBN Governor.

Following the Presidential approval, the Minister of Justice, Chief Bayo Ojo, at a public ceremony shown on NTA signed both the shareholders agreement and the headquarters agreement on behalf of the federal government. The CBN Board had approved the investment on August 2, 2006, in line with its authority and limits set by section 27(1) (i) and (ii) and Sec. 31of the new CBN Act, 2007. This law was passed by the National Assembly. Could our attorney general not have had access to this information? Is he creating another scenario to humiliate Prof. Soludo, just as he did during the currency redenomination drama last year?

The CBN Act empowers it to 'subscribe to, hold and sell shares of any corporation or company, ' In addition to AFC, the CBN has invested in other institutions such as the NDIC, NSPMC (The Mint), NEXIM, Bank of Industry, Nigeria Agricultural, Cooperative and Rural Development Bank, Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, Nigeria Agricultural Credit Guarantee Fund and Afrexim Bank. In order to mobilise other African countries for the AFC investment, President Obasanjo also approved the use of a Presidential jet on road shows to Ghana, The Gambia, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt in March 2007 by a delegation of the Technical Committee. The zeal with which the CBN pursued the AFC investment in particular and the reforms in the banking sector in general rhymed with government's plans to make Nigeria one of the 20 largest economies in the world in year 2020.

It is regrettable that this distraction may dampen the enthusiasm of the corporation's staff and overshadow their achievements in the last few months. The institution is involved in funding an electricity power plant in Aba in eastern Nigeria and a broadband and submarine fiber optic cable project stretching from Portugal along the western coast of Africa to Angola. It is also leading a consortium that will develop sub-Saharan Africa's first-deep sea container port project at the Atlantic coastline area of Olokola in Nigeria and financing the construction of an 88 kilometre ring road in Port Harcourt and reviving electricity projects in Rivers State.

Just a few weeks ago, President Yar'Adua announced an initiative on Accelerated Expansion of Power Infrastructure. AFC is to source funding for, and provide technical expertise for this renewed drive to improve electricity generation and production. Quite fortuitously, it was the week that the organisation announced that it was arranging funding from international financial market for up to $2.8 billion for the Accelerated Expansion of Electricity Infrastructure, the administration's quick-fix step to address the energy gap, that the AGF announced the probe.

The immediate impact of the Aondoakaa inquiry is that the AFC's reputation could be demeaned in such a way that its capacity to source offshore funds to execute its mandates could be diminished. How could the country's attorney general be harming the credibility of an institution that is spearheading the implementation of the President's key agenda? It is a clear case of a senior government official working at cross purpose with the administration he is serving in. The nation is worried that the last one year has been spent largely on motions without movement. The failure of President Yar'Adua so far is not just because he has been an absent leader. In his absence a new generation of Abuja mafia is emerging. Their struggle for power will further dwarf his effectiveness.


Etim is a company executive in Lagos

http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/editorial_opinion/article04//indexn3_html?pdate=010508&ptitle=Soludo,%20AFC%20and%20the%20new%20Abuja%20mafia&cpdate=010508