In what appears as government
moves to probe the former Minister of
Education, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, the
Independent Corrupt Practices and
other Related Offences Commission
(ICPC) on Wednesday arrested Mr
Tom Chiahemen, Publisher of the
National Accord Newspapers, Abuja
over advertisements his company
placed in 2006 and 2007 on behalf of
the Ministry of Education.

Mr Chiahemen disclosed his arrest in
an online statement sent to African
Examiner.

The statement reads in full:

“Following several telephone calls I received from colleagues, friends
and family members, including visits to my office and home, I wish to
confirm that I was invited, arrested and detained for over seven (7)
hours by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related
Offences Commission (ICPC) at its headquarters in Abuja on
Wednesday. I was also asked to report back at 10 am today
(Thursday) and was kept for over three (3) hours before a lawyer-
friend arrived to sign my bail forms.

“From 10.00am when I arrived to honour the Commission’s
Headquarters on Wednesday to honour their written invitation, I was
not allowed to leave the ICPC until 5:12pm.

“In summary, I would say that I was questioned over the
Advertisements placed in several Nigerian Newspapers by the
Federal Ministry of Education during the tenure of Dr. Obiageli
Ezekwesili, between August 2006 and May 2007.

“The ICPC had, in a letter dated March 4, 2013 (with reference No.
ICPC/CH/FIU.2/126 and addressed to me, said it was investigating
“allegations that bothered on the violation of the Corrupt Practices
and Other Related Offences Act 2000.” It added that pursuant to
Section 28 of the said Act, I was required to appear before the
undersigned (Adedayo A. Kayode, Head, Financial Investigation Unit)
on Wednesday, 6th March 2013 at the ICPC Headquarters, Abuja by
10.00 hours.”

“I arrived the ICPC Headquarters a few minutes to 10.00am and
spent a few minutes at the reception carrying out all the procedures
including surrendering of my telephone handset, before I was shown
to the office of Mr. A. A. Kayode.

“I was handed over to one female official of the Unit who took me into
a tiny room with a big table surrounded by about four chairs. There
was no television or radio set in the room to watch or listen to.

“Without any preamble, she asked me to say all I knew and/or did
with the Federal Ministry of Education between 2006 and 2007 while I
was a staff of Daily Independent Newspaper.

“I explained to her that a company in which I owned majority shares,
Cattigan Communications Limited, was appointed in August 2006 by
the Federal Ministry of Education to handle media buying and
placements (of advertisements) for the Ministry. In that capacity, I
explained to the ICPC official, Cattigan Communications Ltd was
expected to handle the placement/payment of all public notices,
announcements and other publicity/promotions materials from the
Ministry for public/broadcast in the approved national dailies and
electronic stations.

“I went further to recall that in the print media, which Cattigan
Communications Ltd handled mostly, various advertisements running
into almost N30million were placed and paid for by the Federal
Ministry of Education.

“I explained to the lady the circumstances that led to the appointment
of Cattigan Communications Ltd to handle media buying/placements
during the Education Sector Reform Programme of the
Ezekwesili/Obasanjo administration. I told her that the Company was
nominated and presented to the Ministry by Correspondents of the
various national media organizations covering Education Sector,
under the umbrella organization, Education Correspondents
Association of Nigeria (ECAN).

“After listening to my explanations, she said she believed my story
because it tallied with the findings by the ICPC investigators. She told
me they had been to the Daily Independent, my former place of work
and all that. She however asked if I had any documentary evidence
to prove that my company was appointed by the Ministry to handle
the job and whether there were any receipts to back up payments
that were made to Cattigan Communications Ltd. I told her if I
searched my house, I could still locate the letter appointing Cattigan
Communications Ltd and other receipts/acknowledgements of the
payments. I was then given 10 minutes to produce the above
documents from my house, which is not far away from ICPC
headquarters.

“To my utter surprise, when I presented the original copy of the said
letter dated August 24, 2006 and other documents, the ICPC officials
changed their posture. First, they excused me from the Interrogation
Room for about 10 minutes, during which the lady and 3 others went
over my documents and discussed inaudibly among themselves.
“When I was invited back into the Interrogation Room, I was handed
an entirely different form which indicated that I was under arrest and
that the statement I was going to make from thence would be used
against me. I sought to know if I could call in my lawyer to guide and
bail me, but they chorused: “no,” that they don’t allow lawyers to bail
people. Then I asked them to explain why I was under arrest.

“To my bemusement, the lady said I lied because the letter dated
August 24, 2006 appointing Cattigan Communications Limited to
handle advert placements for the Ministry was looking newer and
neater than the letter sent to me only three days ago (March 4, 2013)
by the ICPC. They all argued and insisted that there was no way a
letter issued in 2006 could look so new. I only swore and stood by my
word that the letter was indeed given to me by the Ministry in 2006
and that I was touching or bringing it out from the file for the first time
as there had been no need to touch it before now.

“Their second complaint was that I wrote two different letters to the
Minister of Education on the same day (January 23, 2007) claiming
two different sums of money (N33,395,734.20 and N19,501,327.95).
My explanation was that the second letter was only a follow-up on the
first letter to adjust the number of pages that were to be placed in
newspapers with the available funds, in cheque form. I told the ICPC
officials that the first letter had proposed a total of 125 pages of
Adverts to be placed in 12 different national dailies (The Punch, Daily
Independent, Daily Champion, Thisday, Daily Sun, The Guardian,
The Nation, Leadership, Daily Trust, New Age and New Nigerian) at
the cost of N32,348,195.13 plus VAT of N1,047,539.07), totaling N33,
395,734.20.

The second letter, also dated 23/1/2007 was written in response to
the need to reduce the number of pages of Adverts and the number
of Newspapers to publish the Adverts within the sum ofN20million that
was readily available to the Task Team to use for the payment of
Adverts at the time. This second letter was asking the Minister for the
release of the sum of N19,501,327.95 (as against the earlier letter
that was requesting for N33,395,734.20). This followed the dropping
of two newspapers: Daily Independent and Leadership from the list of
papers earlier proposed.

“The ICPC officials further questioned the propriety of me working
with Daily Independent and at the same time running Cattigan
Communications Ltd which, according to them, was performing similar
functions as my employer, Daily Independent. I tried unsuccessfully to
educate them that Cattigan Communications was only a consulting
firm and that I wasn’t running it full-time; nor was the Company
competing with Daily Independent.

“The issue of Receipts and Invoices used in the transaction also
came up. The ICPC wanted me to show evidence that the N28.
2million that the Federal Ministry of Education paid to Cattigan
Communications was paid to the various Newspapers listed and if so,
where are the Receipts (not the Invoices attached) from those
papers?

“They again wanted me to prove that the Newspapers said to have
been paid the various sums of money actually published the Adverts
for the Ministry and if so, where are the copies of the papers as
evidence?

“I told the ICPC officials that I had collected both the tearsheets
(pages of Newspapers showing the Adverts) and Receipts from the
various Newspapers and handed them over to the Ministry’s Task
Team led, then by Dr. Okey Ikechukwu.

“One of the ICPC officials did ask me how much of the money went to
Dr. Okey Ikechukwu and I said as far as the Adverts placed in the
print media were concerned, each of the Correspondents was
required to forfeit one per cent (1%) of their commission to Cattigan
Communications to settle the bank’s COT, while each Correspondent
who was a member of ECAN, contributed 5% of their commission to
the Treasurer of the Association.

“The ICPC officials were of the view that Cattigan Communications
could be one of the Companies used as a conduit pipe for siphoning
government funds and they told me pointedly that it was possible the
whole Advert jamboree during the tenure of Dr. Ezekwesili as
Education Minister could be a hoax.

“Otherwise, they insisted, I must tell/show the ICPC what each of the
Adverts was about (the content), and where the Adverts were
published. This is something that took place as far back as between
September 2006 and May 2007.

By the time I was released to go home on Wednesday, it was 5.12pm
and I was asked to report back on Thursday for continuation of the
interrogation.

“When I reported at the ICPC headquarters today, I was handed sets
of the documents that had been collected from me on Wednesday
and photocopied. I was asked for write “certified true copy, my full
names, designation, cattigan Communications Ltd, my signature and
date.”

“After the exercise, which took almost 30 minutes to complete, I was
told to go to the gate of the ICPC and make phone calls and bring
somebody to come and bail me. I went to where I had earlier
surrendered my handset, made several phone calls, first to the
Chairman of the Abuja council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists
(NUJ), friends, colleagues and family members. I went back to the
financial investigation unit and waited for about one hour before a
friend (names withheld) arrived and was handed my bail forms to
complete and sign. He was told to be ready to produce me any time
the ICPC needed me.

“As I was signing a section in the form meant for me, I noticed that the
offence against me was: violation of the corrupt practices and other
related offences Act 2000.”

Obviously, this arrest is as a result of recent allegation made by Dr
Oby Ezekwesili that Jonathan’s administration has siphoned $67
billion Foreign Exchange Reserve left by Late President Musa
Yar'Adua and President Olusegun Obasanjo, an allegation that the
presidency has described as “deliberate dissemination of falsehood,
unsubstantiated and malicious claims.”

Source: http://africanexaminer.com/ICPC0307

Now they're trying to dig up dirt on Ezekwesili all because she demanded transparency and Good Governance..

Well that's what you get when you open "Can of Worms" relating to the Government of the Day..

Thought we are past the era of political victimisation against perceived enemies and witch-hunting. Did ICPC just received a petition against Oby or an attempt to frame her up, after she publicly humiliated this government by demanding for accountability in governance? Is this government being overly critical and intolerant to public criticism, thereby resorting into bullish politics to silence critics? Hope it is not a surreptitious tactics employed to stymie Oby, reminiscent of the Abacha and OBJ regimes!

No problem, all we want is accountability.

After all said and done, GEJ and his dead Boss should produce the receipt of how he squandered $67B or tell us the amount they spent judiciously and the amount that was stolen and misappropriated

Thank God GEJ is not serving as a millitary Head of State, else, he would have been worse than Idi Amin.

They want to rope Madam due process!
The excerpt that is funny to me in the interrogation is 'how will a document signed in 2006 be neater that the one signed 3 days ago'? When the guy had already told them he filed the document immediately it was signed. Does a file make a document rough with time?
People are just saying Jonathan is cool, the man is cunning and administratively clueless.
Is it a crime to criticize the government?

Interesting, space booked & will be right back to make utmost utilisation of it.