Yawa don gas

gurunlocker:
If US is not very sure about the allegations, they won't ask for another investigation..... Sure they have hard evidence.

It baffles me that most people don’t seems to understand the way the US usually blackmail upright African men in high positions just because they want someone of their own interest in that position.
Just wait and see the way they will also come for the likes of Okonjo iweala soon..
God know i detest all this white men..
Incase you don’t know America is the most corrupt and indebted country in the world but they will never talk about it.
They are also the second largest traffickers of hard drugs ,cocaine, marijuana aside Mexico. They will also not talk about it but will rather be intimidating African countries and their people.

seunmsg:
Very watery allegations. It’s very obvious they simply want him out just to make the bank an instrument of western control of African countries.

I agree

na waoo

Nigerian man took his corruptional skills international

He's innocent until proven guilty

Hmmmm....nepotism is embedded in us as Nigerians. Even the brightest practices it. Those allegations are weighty, he should defend himself. One of the few Nigerians one was hopeful is of sound mind. I'll be disappointed if he goes down this way.

It baffles me that most people don’t seems to understand the way the US usually blackmail upright African men in high positions just because they want someone of their own interest in that position.
Just wait and see the way they will also come for the likes of Okonjo iweala soon..
God know i detest all this white men..
Incase you don’t know America is the most corrupt and indebted country in the world but they will never talk about it.
They are also the second largest traffickers of hard drugs ,cocaine, marijuana aside Mexico. They will also not talk about it but will rather be intimidating African countries and their people.

Why do I get the feeling that it was the sexual harassment thing that made people shine their eyes on him in the first place?

if i'm to be honest, the so called allegations aren't serious. There is nowhere in the world where there is no favouritism. Trump the president of the USA, appointed his daughter and son-in-law to positions of power.
A Nigerian is head of the AFDB, it is normal that he would favour Nigeria, why do you think countries fight over such things. Countries fight over such things because of what they stand to gain.

Fraudulently awarding contracts is a serious one for me.

I have read the allegations and if you work in Nigeria under Nigerian executives, you will see a familiar trend which points to nepotism - He should be thoroughly investigated and removed from office and jailed/fined as a clear example

All I can summarize here is the politics of reelection for a second term.
If you are talking about re recruitment, are those hands needed, are they qualified, was the procedure followed etc the fin stage the CEO can decide to pick out out the most qualified hands. Also these are mere allegations and it must be proved before any sanction.

Imagine the allegations against the former PENCOM DG? That woman performed well as a DG I can smell the hands of fellow Nigerian here

Whether true or not, he hasn't been proven guilty of any of these allegations.

The US sure knows how to bring down anybody at all cost the moment they sense such person is a threat. Threat in what sense? Threat to the perpetual underdevelopment of Africa.

Gaddafi was killed because of the New Gold-backed African currency (Dinar). He was accused of various lies. The US sponsored protests and supplied ammunitions. What happened to the Stockpiled gold after his death, it all vanished into thin air.

I don't believe a bit of these allegations... Their contribution to the AFDB is for the sake of controlling it, but the moment they realized they were losing control and would become more irrelevant in the next 5 years of unopposed candidacy, they swerved into action of defamation.

Okonjo Iweala was openly opposed by the Obama Administration when she also vied for World Bank lead position few years back.

There is nothing new under the sun with US. There have been independent probes earlier which returned false. Keep pulling down, God will keep lifting us up.

If Nigerians were massively recruited, and so what! They are the largest African contributors and were previously underrepresented. I'm neither saying Adesina is all clean nor corrupt, what I'm saying is why not just nominate your own candidate so your intentions might be clear to all?

lshitu12:
All these for only him?

I wonder oh!, this is technical knockout. TKO!

emkz:


I will summarize the 16 points to you incase you did not read, inter alia, you read cursorily: Dr Adesina is alleged to have abused his position by violating ethical guidelines in the recruitment and promotion of staff, disrespected internal probationary rules, condoned sexual harassment by his protégé, recruited unqualified staff, favouritism, duplicated company roles and probably wasted banks funds on unproductive concerns.

If you recall Dominique Strass Kahn, former IMF Chief; he was accused of ethical misconduct by sexually harassing a hotel maid and he resigned. If you worked in an international organization, you'd know that ethical misconduct or condoning ethical misconduct is as terrible as financial misconduct.

Do you know you have not answered the question he asked you?

Now, let me ask you again in case you have forgotten.

'how much did they said he stole'?

That is how you people fail interviews.

Typical Nigerians undermining due process

deji17:
The guy carried their practice under the ineffectual buffoon to AFDB. GEJ / PDP Minister that is being packaged by IPOB for Presidency.
Noticed the Igbos he unethically recruited.

I know you Yorubas always try to push your predicaments to Igbos, so this long list of allegations na only Igbo name you saw
Sahara report is trying to drag Igbos into Adesina’s current predicament.

Read the allegations from indipendent source

A long list of grievances

However, the controversy the Nigerian leader has become engulfed in since the beginning of April is unprecedented. In documents received in recent weeks by several media outlets, including Jeune Afrique, The Africa Report, and our colleagues at the French daily Le Monde and the British bulletin Africa Confidential, a group of anonymous “concerned staff members” detailed a long list of grievances (16 in the English version and several dozen in the French version) towards the AfDB president.

Less lyrical than the French version, the English text is a formal document “disclosing various cases of alleged breaches of the Code of Conduct” addressed to the Office of Integrity and Anti-Corruption (PIAC) and to the presidents of the Ethics Committee and Audit and Finance Committee .

It lists a certain number of appointments and departures deemed questionable and, above all, mentions several contracts approved by Adesina’s teams supposedly in violation of the AfDB’s statutory and ethical rules.

Questionable contract awarding procedures

The French text includes a long account denouncing pell-mell and in a particularly vehement fashion the “unusual managerial style”, the “dominance of impunity and nepotism”, the “chaotic management of human resources” and the “financial waste and lack of budgetary discipline” characterising the organisation under Adesina. The document appears to have been drafted after the matter was referred to PIAC.

When Jeune Afrique contacted the group of staff members at the anonymous email address they had indicated, the following reply was received: “So that you don’t doubt our own dedication to the procedure, we waited six weeks for a response. The delay seems deliberate and, according to our sources, the inquiry has been hindered and has not even begun.”

In their missive to PIAC and the Audit Committee, the “concerned staff members” allude to several contracts governed by awarding procedures and rules that have been deemed questionable.

The staff members refer in particular to two deals, together valued at “more than $18m”, awarded by the Statistics Department to two information processing experts, one of whom is an internationally renowned expert from New York and the other a Russian national who is little known outside the relevant circles.

The anonymous document states that the deals were “fraudulently awarded” based on “fraud investigations and internal audits” which established “the guilt” of one of the bank’s top officials in 2016. The official was, as it happens, supposedly promoted several years later, representing “another example of impunity”, according to the letter Jeune Afrique consulted.

A global Swiss fertiliser giant in the hot seat

The same is true of a negotiated contract valued at $5.46m awarded by a Nigerian structure dedicated to agriculture and financed by a donation from the AfDB, whose stipulations prohibit awarding contracts under such conditions. The group of staff members incriminates one of the institution’s Nigerian managers, with the authors of the letter highlighting the manager’s alleged direct family relationship with the AfDB president.

While the missive sent to PIAC omits the identity of the beneficiary of the contract, the “whistle-blower” letter points the blame at a global Swiss fertiliser giant. The authors of the letter go on to indicate that despite the reservations expressed by the bank’s Office of the Auditor General, the invoice was nevertheless paid via the direct intervention of the pan-African institution’s president.

Two additional negotiated contracts with a Kenyan firm concern the Human Resources Department and amount to $2.1m, which – according to the document – is 20 times the approved sign-off limit for the manager involved. No disciplinary action seems to have been taken against the manager. Moreover, the authors of the letter were outraged that he left his position at the bank “with a bonus compensation paid by the AfDB”.

An ethics committee gone quiet…

“Despite the repeated requests made by board members, the bank still does not have a mechanism in place to prevent a staff member who is being held liable for misappropriation of funds from leaving the bank without paying the price for his or her crimes”, the authors of the letter wrote, adding that “the Ethics Office is useless”.

“At the board level, there is no longer an ethics committee”, they wrote.

However, the AfDB does have an ethics office, run by Paula Santos da Costa, a member of the Portuguese Bar Association and law graduate with degrees from Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne University, ISCTE (Lisbon) and the University of Lyon-3.

She previously worked at the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) and chaired the Disciplinary Board there before joining the Ethics Office at the pan-African bank at the end of 2010.

Although these accusations more or less directly implicate Adesina, they bring to mind the chain of accountability. Regarding the contract with the Swiss fertiliser company, the authors of the letter asserted: “This serious matter was not brought to the attention of the [executive] board, which calls into question the independence of PIAC – the investigation unit – which reports to Mr Adesina.”

Led by seasoned professionals

This last accusation – included in the letter sent to the media, but not in the official document sent to the Audit Committee and PIAC – is especially serious given that the unit has been run for many years by seasoned professionals.

Since early 2019, it has been headed by British national Alan Bacarese, a veteran of the Crown Prosecution Service, former United Kingdom Senior Crown Prosecutor and former “technical advisor to the UK’s delegation to the OECD’s Working Group on Bribery”, according to his professional biography.

Prior to Bacarese, the position was held by Bubacarr Sankareh, a former auditor general of Gambia. Under his leadership, PIAC imposed “debarments of 76 months and 12 months on former Alstom companies” acquired by GE Power in 2015 due to findings that these companies “engaged in bribery and fraud in 2006 and 2011 in relation to two Bank-financed Egyptian power generation projects.”

Before Sankareh’s appointment as acting director, PIAC had been led for several years by the lawyer Anna Bossman, a former acting commissioner of Ghana’s Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and, since 2017, Ghana’s ambassador to France.

Chain of accountability up to member states

The Office of the Auditor General is headed by Chukwuma Okonkwo, who was appointed as auditor general in 2015 during the final months of the presidency of Rwanda’s Kaberuka (2005-2015). If the allegations reported by the group of staff members turn out to be true, the wrongdoing involves a long series of senior officials.

The chain of accountability may reach as high as the AfDB’s member states. One of the approximations mentioned in the letter received by Jeune Afrique sheds plenty of light on the matter. Indeed, the document refers to an audit of the Human Resources Department by “Moussa Dosso, a former director for Côte d’Ivoire.”

However, according to our information, although the Ivorian director was disconcerted by the way the department was run, the audit request seems to have been made by the French and American directors, and never led to an actual audit, based on the claims of the group of staff members.

Fervent supporters

In a press statement dated 6 April, following the publication of an article in Le Monde, Adesina wrote: “The Ethics Committee of the Board of Directors is following its internal review systems and should be allowed to complete its review and work without interference from anyone or the media.”

The bank boss added, slightly losing his composure: “I am 100% confident that due process and transparency, based on facts and evidence, will indicate that these are all nothing more than spurious and unfounded allegations.”

Although Adesina did not wish to further respond to the accusations targeting his management of the bank, he has plenty of supporters within the institution. They are swift in particular to note the exaggerated nature of some of the criticisms directed at their leader, which in their view trivialise all of the accusations.

Overrepresentation of Nigerians

The group of staff members directs their criticism well beyond the AfDB’s suspicious contracts by also pointing blame at, more broadly, a bank with a highly deficient, if not inexistent, governance structure that is completely subservient to the president’s wishes.

One bone of contention concerns the overrepresentation of Nigerian officials. “Certainly, Nigeria is the AfDB’s largest shareholder, with a little over 9% of the capital, but could that explain why Mr Adesina hires one Nigerian after another to leadership positions at the AfDB?” wrote the group.

While recent departures and retirements, such as the announcement on 31 March of the retirement of Victor Oladokun, the Director of Communication and External Relations and right-hand man of Adesina during his first term – have reduced the share of managers from Nigeria, it’s clear that they are more visible than ever before.

As of mid-March, one of the AfDB’s seven vice presidents was Nigerian (Wale Shonibare, Acting Director of Energy), with four nationals or dual nationals of the country holding top-level positions. Besides Oladokun, they include: Vincent Nmehielle (Secretary General, who also has South African citizenship) Chinelo Anohu (Senior Director of the Africa Forum Investment) and Chukwuma Okonkwo (Auditor General).

Nationality breakdowns and detailed calculations

These breakdowns exasperate Adesina’s supporters, who point out that in 2015 (based on the latest figures available on staff members’ countries of origin) French nationals made up 63 of the AfDB’s headcount (5.2% of the total), meaning they are overrepresented in proportion to France’s share of the capital (3.7%). On that matter, Algeria (4.2% of the capital) has just nine nationals working at the bank (i.e., 0.7% of the staff) and yet that has not stirred up any controversy.

These detailed calculations are all the more irritating to those close to the leader from Abuja since, under the presidency of Kaberuka, the number of Rwandans working at the AfDB increased significantly, doubling between 2009 and 2015 to 28 staff members, i.e., 2.4 AfDB staff members per million Rwandans, compared with 0.276 for the continent’s most populous country.

The institution’s longest-standing staff members also recall the considerable number of East African officials, sometimes from the Rwandan diaspora, who were promoted during that same period. At the end of 2014, the top of the organisational chart featured Ugandan nationals such as Mohammad Ali Mubarak Kisubi (Auditor General), Joel Serunkuma Kibazo (Director of Communication) and Anne Namara Kabagambe (Chief of Staff and Director of Cabinet).

Even outside of the efforts made under Adesina’s presidency to “correct” the possible underrepresentation of his fellow Nigerian citizens, the group of staff members lists a host of decisions (appointments, negotiated departures, promotions, compensation packages, etc.) that appear to be acts of government, i.e., decisions taken which, although they may not violate the institution’s rules, push them to their extreme limits.

There is little doubt that the human resources policies implemented under Adesina shook up an institution attached to its traditions and a certain degree of comfort. In addition to the regionalisation process, carried out in a stormy climate, with 39% of staff now located in regional offices instead of at headquarters (versus 29% in 2016), management has increased its use of consultants (there were a total of 683 at the end of 2018) and outside recruitment (329).

“The AfDB is an institution that needs to recruit and promote its workers based on their skills and merit,” the authors of the letter wrote in a particularly revealing passage.

Alex9999:


Again, you don't have "steal" to bring down an organization. You just have to violate rules -- OMG. Is our country/continent going anywhere soon? I assume you are a youth. With this kind of thinking -- no chance!

Most Nigerians born after 1985, I. E those who grew up after the Babanhida era are often unaware of their moral failings and corruption because that is the environment they see as normal!

[quote author=EdenSuperb post=90020537]
USA is the biggest shareholder in afdb after Nigeria

who are you? they'll get him out. buhari will be asked to get a replacement in. the problem is we allowed all these foreign countries as shareholders. afdb is using foreigner's monies

Exc2000:
No wonder he was cleared by the board... all this allegation are watery and cant stand

Nawa ooo, I'm not in support of all this but let's see what comes out of the external investigators. May God help him sha.

teepain:


The truth is that AFDB under the sharp leadership of Adesina has taken a lot of lending businesses away from American and French interests and the guy has demonstrated a sense of independence that is alien to these neocolonialists who would rather have their lackey head AfDB.

Sadly, I read on here yesterday how Adesina was thrown under the bus by some Nigerian tribal irredentists who accused him of hriring his Yoruba brothers in breach of extant recruitment processes and controls. However, this article has rubbished all those claims. The 2 major people mentioned as having enjoyed undue advantage from the troubled AfDB President do not share tribal affiliations with him but they are Nigerians and if they were qualified why wouldn't he allow their employment to go through.

Nigerians should be careful the way we play the tribal cards because at the end of the day only Nigerians can help Nigeria and Nigerians! Help will not come from outside.

The moral of this debacle can be captured in this rhetorical question, "Why does Africa Development Bank need non-africans as shareholders?"

Think Africa, Africa think.

Africans don't think, they follow their prejudice and coat it with platitudes. People who have not worked in high wire positions take these allegations at face value. A cursory look at the characters Trump has pardoned will free them of the idea that this US administration lives in a moral universe.

Omitted from the long list of offences is China and the rebalancing of the Afdb currency portfolio.

Unfortunately there are those in Nigeria who will hate on the man because he was a PDP minister, others will hate on him because they want to zero his chances of returning to elected office and yet others because they hate his tribe. But anyone who gets a bank bond issuance oversubscribed during covid and who retains a triple A rating is a good ceo.

Akin Adesina is a fine gentleman, US can never be so desperate to bring a corrupt leader down. This isn't about Tribe, Adesina did well in Agric ministry, he's making giant strides in Africa. Unless he's used our funds for Tinubu and cronies, then he deserves to be defended

UnclePati:
Yoruba come and carry Una pikin
His a disgrace

U are stupid .

One of the reason why he is in these mess is because he decided a Igbo who has a bad record of sexual harassment.

He also engaged a Igbo who was kicked out of PENCOM for financial misappropriation.

I really hope he is not guilty of these because these are really weighty accusations. Condoning sexual harassment is as bad as sexually harassing someone. Ethics is a very big deal in an international agency. I am with the US insisting on a neutral investigation.

pfadom:
What are be the interests and benefits of the US and EU in AfDB?

This is the best time for African people, AU and Africa's leadership to decide for the continent. These bunch of selfish individuals are now treating Africa as a country.

Shameless!!!

Law of life: HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER DICTATES THE TUNE

BreconHills:


Africans don't think, they follow their prejudice and coat it with platitudes. People who have not worked in high wire positions take these allegations at face value. A cursory look at the characters Trump has pardoned will free them of the idea that this US administration lives in a moral universe.

Omitted from the long list of offences is China and the rebalancing of the Afdb currency portfolio.

Unfortunately there are those in Nigeria who will hate on the man because he was a PDP minister, others will hate on him because they want to zero his chances of returning to elected office and yet others because they hate his tribe. But anyone who gets a bank bond issuance oversubscribed during covid and who retains a triple A rating is a good ceo.

Brilliant submission!

EdenSuperb:
This is so f##ked, what concerns USA with AFDB, let's deal with our shit internally
They should stick to their business

They are the highest stakeholders after Nigeria.

They should be concerned

[quote author=angelfallz post=90021402]
Nobody has problem with him appointing Nigerians and you also saw he wasn't accused of appointing only Nigerians but other nationals, the problem is giving people unmerited appointments and illegal salaries and pay rise.

seunmsg:
Very watery allegations. It’s very obvious they simply want him out just to make the bank an instrument of western control of African countries.

But our nairaland experts are saying the allegations are damning !

Article 9 shows what the real problem is. Some players feel bypassed by Adesina and eclipsed by Nigeria's prominent role in the bank.

He's a good man

we sell our souls. we sell afdb . now foreigners are everywhere dictating how afdb should be ran