Late last week, on the 11th and 12th August 2011, the media were awash
with the claim that Mrs. Sharon Adefunke Kasali, the Executive
Secretary of Petroleum Equalisation Fund was arrested and detained by
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the EFCC in connection
with economic and financial crimes and corrupt practices.

For the records, we wish to state that, contrary to the report, Mrs.
Kasali was not arrested and is not being detained in connection with
any alleged commission of crimes.

She was invited by the EFCC for questioning as were four other staff
before her, and all were allowed to go home. During her questioning,
Mrs. Kasali was confronted with an anonymous and unsigned petition
written, by a so-called Concerned PEF Staff. She made a statement;
fill in an Asset Declaration Form; and was requested to surrender her
international passports. She was granted bail in her own
self-recognizance, and allowed to go home. In consequence, Mrs. Kasali
canceled her scheduled vacation trip.

Refuting the allegations against her:

Three key allegations were hauled against her in an anonymous and
unsigned petition:

TENURE QUESTION: The first leg in the petition was that Mrs. Kasali’s
tenure as the Executive Secretary of PEF is over, and that contrary to
“procedure”, she has refused to hand-over to the most senior General
Manager in PEF.

It was claimed that a petition against her stay in office beyond her
tenure had been sent to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of
Petroleum, and that the Permanent Secretary had set up an
investigation panel headed by a senior official in the Ministry to
investigate the Petition.

For the avoidance of any doubt, the position of Executive Secretary of
PEF is not a tenured position under the Statute establishing the
agency. Mrs. Kasali was appointed to her current position four years
ago, in April 2007, for an unspecified period of time. Very
instructively, her predecessor in office was in that position for
eleven (11) unbroken years. Mrs. Kasali helped clarified that
misunderstanding.

BANK ACCOUNTS: The second allegation in the petition is that the sum
of N400 million was found in Mrs. Kasali’s personal bank accounts and
that the sums of N50 million and N30 million were found in some other
accounts linked to her. This being untrue, Mrs. Kasali said she
operates two personal bank accounts and the combined total amount of
funds in the accounts is below N4 million, out of which N1.6 Million
is a rent, just collected on a property jointly owned with her
husband. It was possible it wasn’t her account they had in view, she
told them.

NGO FUNDING: The last allegation falsely flung at her was that Mrs.
Kasali forces oil marketers to make donations to Diamond Lights Women
Empowerment Initiative. Diamond Lights Empowerment Initiative is an
NGO founded by Mrs. Kasali in 2005 (two clear years before she got her
present appointment) out of her conviction that indigent young women
from all works of life needed empowerment.

The objective of Diamond Lights is to assist young women in removing
circumstantial limitations placed on them by society. Diamond Lights
is not a front for money laundering.
http://diamondlights.org/index.php

Though she is the founder, Mrs. Kasali does not personally run the
organization as alleged. In the past six years, over 150 young ladies
have enjoyed scholarships into various tertiary institutions in
Nigeria. This NGO is funded via contributions from individuals,
private organizations and multinationals. And right from its inception
to date, the total amount of monetary donation made to the
organization is not in excess of N15 million.

The 2010 audited account of Diamond Light Empowerment Initiative is
thus available for review. Typically, the hidden petitioners have no
reference of any such bank accounts they have made claims to, thus
begging the question into what accounts have the alleged donations of
the oil marketers to the organization been paid?

The Hidden Agenda:

Before Mrs. Kasali was appointed the Executive Secretary of PEF, the
organization had a history of failing to pay oil marketers the
transportation differentials for petroleum products movement from
depots to their sales outlets in order to ensure a uniform national
product pricing. Thus, it was a norm that marketers were owed for
upward of nine months. That has now been address under the Kasali
dispensation. Today, oil marketers are being paid for liftings made
in June 2011. The removal of this fraudulent process has certainly not
gone well with many stakeholders but the question is: when then did it
become a crime to pay oil marketers as the statute of PEF demands? We
challenge any oil marketer with proof of any inducement to Mrs. Kasali
to please come forward and say so.

Not satisfied with a transparent corridor in the new operational
regime at the PEF, outright false claims have been spurned that Mrs.
Kasali used proxies to set up companies to which she selectively
awarded contracts from PEF. Truth is that all the contracts awarded by
the PEF under Mrs. Kasali have followed due process. Advertorials were
placed in the media calling for tenders of bids. The Board of the PEF
publicly announces bid winners after going through a rigorous
screening exercise.

The calculation of those hunting Mrs. Kasali is that once she is
sufficiently demonized or scandalized in the public, and tainted with
allegation of corruption, she would either resign in anger and
frustration, or be removed from office by an overwhelmed Government.

The case of a former Minister of Health, Professor Adenike Grange and
the ex commissioners of the National Electricity Regulatory
Commission, who were charged by the EFCC to court for corruption but
cleared for want of evidence, are instructive precedents in this
regard. In both cases, the damage had been done before their
exoneration.

This conspiracy has practically done everything both physical and
metaphysical in the last four years to get rid of Mrs. Kasali. At a
point, owing to threats to her life, Mrs. Kasali had to seek extra
police protection from the office of the Inspector-General of Police.
The grouse of this conspiracy is that the institution is a cash cow,
and that Mrs. Kasali’s ethical standards and uprightness is an
obstacle to corrupt enrichment.

As Executive Secretary, Mrs. Kasali was compelled to introduce an
e-loading system titled “Project Aquila” to checkmate the corrupt
practice of presentation of fictitious claims by marketers. Before her
tenure, the practice that was rife was that some marketers would sell
their products at the depots, and yet present bridging cost claims
that they “incurred” in transporting products to their retail outlets
in far-flung places all over the Country. Through that fraudulent
practice, the Federal Government of Nigeria was losing billions of
naira. This is what is known as “bridging by air”. Apart from ensuring
a tighter claims verification regime, Project Aquila will also help
deal in eliminating corruption and ensuring prompt payment of bridging
cost. Under this system, presentations of fake claims and other
inefficiencies will be eliminated.

Apart from introducing the e-payment and e-loading systems, Mrs.
Kasali also initiated a process that led to the computation of money
owed petroleum marketers between 2004 and 2008, totaling N17.4 billion
and took swift action to ensure that the outstanding amounts were
paid. Her administration put in place a regulation that bridging costs
claims by marketers are time-barred, and must be presented within nine
months; otherwise the claims will lapse. Except on exceptional grounds
and for proven justifiable and good reasons for delay in presentation
of claims outside the nine-month period, PEF has upheld this
regulation.


Finally, we wish to assure the Federal Government of Nigeria that has
given Mrs. Sharon Adefunke Kasali an opportunity to serve her
fatherland and contribute to her development, that all these
allegations are the work of political prostitutes seeking to capture
presumed juicy official executive positions. To be sure, the season is
ripe for the hungry political marauders who are now on the prowl, and
for who the reputation and integrity of their targets will not be
hallowed grounds on a wrecking mission.

Getting to know Mrs. Sharon Adefunke Kasali.

Mrs. Sharon Adefunke Kasali is a chartered accountant of international
repute. In 1986, she completed a Bachelor degree in Business
Administration & Accounting from Texas Southern University and
obtained a Master of Business Administration in Finance and MIS in
University of Houston , Graduate School of Business in 1991. She was
certified as a public accountant the same year. She started her work
career in the United States of America with the globally renowned
accounting organization, Arthur Andersen. She later joined Exxon Mobil
in the United States . She was later transferred to Mobil Africa. She
worked in Nigeria, France and Kenya and rose to the position of East
Africa Regional Director of Finance, Exxon Mobil Africa. At the Zenith
of her work, there, she had seven Finance Directors reporting to her.
She left Exxon Mobil in 2004 and joined Nigeria Sao Tome Principe
Joint Development Authority as Deputy Director Audit. It was from this
position she was appointed to the position of Executive Secretary PEF
in March 2007.

Signed
Jiti Ogunye
Jiti Ogunye Chambers
Lagos