Between himself, his Chief
Security Officer and the
former Petroluem Minister,
former President Goodluck
Jonathan spent, in just one
deal, a princely $6.9 million
dollars to buy three 40-feet
mobile stages for use during
mass public speaking events,
investigations have now
revealed.
Federal government
investigators and security
agencies say this is just one of
the tons of allegedly corrupt
practices frequently engaged
and condoned under the
presidency of the immediate
past president.
Besides the fact that the sum
for the stages have been
incredibly inflated according
to mobile stages industry
experts, government
investigators say there is no
evidence as yet that any stage
was purchased at all.
While the cost of mobile
stages range in size and
designs, only outlandish rock
star musicians in Europe and
the U.S. spend hundreds of
thousands on their huge
stages way bigger than the
40-feet stages. Even then,
those musicians and super
stars would not pay over $2m
per stage, according to
industry sources.
The process of procurement
of the three mobile stages was
neither known to extant
Nigerian laws and due
process regulations, nor were
the offices of the Auditor-
General and the Accountant-
General in the know,
according to investigators.
“There are no records of this
purchase which was carried
out in late 2011,” says an
authoritative source.
This purchase was carried out
only few months after Mr.
Jonathan won a general
election for a full term after
having completed the term of
late President Umaru
Yar’adua.
A competent source said that
at the centre of the
fraudulent financial ring was
the former Chief Security Officer (CSO)
to President Jonathan, Gordon Obuah,
who initiated a memo to the former
president on October 17, 2011 asking for
the purchase of three mobile stages.
He said in that memo to the former
president that this is regarding “my
earlier discussion with Your Excellency
on the security implication of your
public appearances and your subsequent
directive on the need to procure a
secured presidential platform”.
And on the same day, without any
financial advise or purchase order
reviews, the former president minuted
an approval of the request to buy the
three stages to the then Minister for
Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-
Madueke.
In his minute, the president said “we
have discussed this, please deal.”
Right after that okay from the president,
on the same October 17, the Senior
Special Assistant to the President on
Administrative Matters, Matt
Aikhionbere did another letter on the
strength of the president’s approval
requesting the Petroluem Minister to
take action on the request to purchase
the stages for $6.9m.
By the next month, an NNPC payment
voucher number 3840336 was already in
place revealing that the money was
released.
The NNPC directed that the money be
taken from one of its accounts in New
York CITIBANK with sort code CITIUS 33,
and Routing number 021000089.
It was first routed from the US bank to
an NNPC account in Zenith Bank account
number 5000026593, Maitama branch in
Abuja, from where the money was sent
to a private account.
The sum of $6.9m was then credited to a
Sterling Bank account of one J. Marine
Logistics Limited, Abuja, a company
investigators say was registered by
Obuah.
The CSO himself according to
investigators have not been able to show
proof of the purchase and his memo
irked his bosses at the SSS that he took
the initiative to write requesting for the
stages, an action officials say was way
above his pay grade.
Said an official of one of the security
agencies conducting the investigation, “it
is not the duty or responsibility of the
CSO to make the determination on that
purchase. He was meant to have
informed the service, which will then
review the situation and act
accordingly.”
The source continued: “What has
happened here is that the former
president and the former minister with
the collusion of the CSO decided to dip
their hands into the public till and steal
public funds for other purposes since no
one has found the stages as we speak.”
The source said specifically that the
$6.9miilion in question was promptly
paid on November 29, 2011 into a
private account belonging to the former
CSO.
“The former president approved the
procurement of the mobile platforms
without due process, bypassing the
Procurement Act.
“There was also no appropriation in the
2011 budget for such facility,”
investigators said.
The source added that neither the
minister of Finance nor the Director-
General of the Budget Office was aware
of the deal.
Investigators say this is just one of the
several instances where the Jonathan
administration used secret NNPC
accounts to fund many questionable
projects and for alleged personal
financial aggrandizement.
Already the CSO has been questioned
over his role and activities in the
Jonathan presidency. It would be
recalled that he was arrested, detained,
questioned and later released.
Former President Jonathan and Mrs.
Alison-Madueke could not be reached for
comments.
But when contacted by PREMIUM TIMES,
Mr. Obuah denied initiating or engaging
in any such transaction.
“The allegation is totally false and
baseless,” the former CSO said through
his lawyer, Andrew Itsekiri.
“There was nothing like that. No such
memo was initiated and no such money
was released to him. They are just
levying allegations they cannot
substantiate against him.
“It is one of the allegations he was
confronted with by the SSS, and it was
found that they were pack of lies. Let
NNPC come out with the records that any
such funds were released to him.”
There has been considerable pressure
mounted on the Buhari administration
regarding its determination to probe
allegations of corruption in the past,
including from the National Peace
Committee headed by the former Head
of State, General Abdusalami Abubakar.
A member of that committee, Bishop
Mathew Kukah, is also known alongside
Mr. Abubakar and others in the
Committee to have been involved in
attempts to mellow-out the resolve of
President Buhari in his determination to
probe and deal decisively with
tremendous corrupt practices especially
during the last six to eight years.
Reecall that at the June 29 meeting of the
National Economic Council at the state
House, the council raised questions over
the non- remittance of the finances
generated by the NNPC into the
federation account.
NEC found that whereas the NNPC
claimed to have earned about
N8.1trillion in the last two years, what
NNPC paid into the Federation Account
during the same period was about N4.3
trillion, keeping the balance in its
several secret accounts, allowing the
former president and his cronies access
to such unknown accounts to do as they
please.
Consequently, NEC set up a four-man
committee to investigate the missing
money.
The committee, made up of Governors of
Edo, Kaduna, Akwa Ibom and Gombe,
submitted an interim report to NEC but
in addition appointed financial experts
to conduct forensic audit of the accruals
into the federation account and the
withdrawals from the excess crude
account.
Also President Buhari, in an attempt to
plug some of the procedural loopholes
that facilitate and encourage corruption,
directed that all revenue-generating
agencies of goverment, including NNPC
should now pay all revenues to a
Treasury Single Account, TSA.
TSA makes it rather difficult to hide
government revenues from any agency,
and procedurally discourages a situation
where the president can be accessing a
secret slush account without the
knowledge of the entire public finance
process as was the case in this bogus
$6.9m purchase of mobile stages.

www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/189221-jonathan-alison-madueke-cso-obuah-in-trouble-over-6-9million-mobile-stage-scandal.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter

Hmmm....na wa. Sauce nko?

Post too congested add more paragraphs then we can read



[size=15pt]#SUGARBEE[/size]

Enough if this media propaganda Go to court if you have a case

Take these people to court and leave court of public opinion.


Are we meant to condemn them before hearing their side of the story like what happened between Auditor General and NDDC management?