- As Fidelity appoints Acting MD, following N23bn scam
A comment by a university teacher, insinuating that the Warri, Lagos, Brass Oil and Gas Free Zones were illegal operations may have drawn the ire of a legal practitioner, Iyobosa Egerin who described the remark as “cruel, unfortunate, misleading and disheartening”.
Iyobosa who reacted on the sideline of the Labour Day Celebrations has subsequently allayed the fears of workers earning their pay from Free Zones to continue to put in their best, because the view of a Law teacher, as published by the Nation of April 20, 2016 was far from reality; and could seriously demoralize the OGFZs, with some fearing for their jobs.
Before the recent alleged observation of the University don, there had been several insinuations, some of them bordering on sheer lousy remarks and threats, creating fears in the minds of both investors and their workers, in respect of the sustainability of the OGFZs operation in Nigeria.
“Without mincing words, I will like to state that the insinuations and publications are vexatious, offensive and completely untrue”, he indicated”, adding that his initial reaction was to ignore it and simply regard it as an aspect of the ongoing campaign of calumny against Oil and Gas Free Zones Authority (OGFZA) by some stakeholders for selfish business interest as against the overall interest of Nigeria’’.
“However, considering the negative impact such publications would have on the unsuspecting reading public, I have decided to respond to the said publication in order to keep the records straight”, the legal practitioner explained, noting that every informed Nigerian who has no intention of misleading either the Federal Government or the people knows that the law establishing the OGFZs, gave it “the statutory power to license oil and gas free zone’’.
” The law empowers OGFZA to take over and perform such other functions being hitherto performed by the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) as they relate to oil and gas activities from any of the Nigeria Export Processing Zones.
“The unambiguous implications of the law setting up OGFZA is that the legislature has expressly limited the functions of NEPZA over all export processing zones by virtue of the oil and gas free zones act’’, he said, adding that anyone who has doubts concerning the establishment and operations of the three OGFZs should do a little bit of research or be more thorough in their work, before making public pronouncement.
“If they do, they will realize that the oil and gas free zone, Warri, the Eko Support Oil and Gas Free Zone, Apapa, Lagos and the Brass oil and gas free zones went through the gamut of due process and diligence.
“I have confirmed that these oil and gas free zones went through the whole gamut of due process and diligence from the applications through the ministerial recommendations and culminating in the Presidential approval gazetted by the Federal Government,’’ he said.
He therefore called on stakeholders and commentators who have issues with the establishment of oil and gas free zones to visit the office of the OGFZA to seek clarifications on grounds that their assumptions and uninformed positions and posture has huge negative financial implications to the Federal Government.
In the meantime, the Board of Directors of Fidelity Bank Plc has appointed the Executive Director, North, Alhaji Mohammed Balarabe, as the Acting Managing Director/Chief Executive of the bank with immediate effect subject to regulatory approval.
The appointment, according to a statement by the bank on Monday, follows the absence of the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Nnamdi Okonkwo, who was last week arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission alongside some officials of the bank for allegedly receiving $115m (N23bn) from a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, to prosecute the re-election of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The bank, however, reassured the over 400,000 shareholders and 3.4 million customers of its continued seamless services.
The EFCC also arrested the bank’s Head of Operations, Mr. Martins Izuogbe, for his role in the alleged scam, which the anti-graft agency described as unprecedented.
During the build-up to the 2015 presidential election, Alison-Madueke allegedly invited Okonkwo to help her handle some cash, which would be disbursed to electoral officials and groups.
A source disclosed that the fraud was uncovered when the EFCC began investigations into how officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Rivers, Delta and Akwa Ibom states received N675.1m.
The detective said, “The MD of Fidelity Bank has been arrested and is currently in our custody. During investigations into the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioners, we got a major breakthrough as funds disbursed were traced to Fidelity Bank.
“We invited the MD, who then confessed to us that during the build-up to the presidential election, Diezani invited him to a meeting in Abuja. Diezani told him that some companies would deposit some funds in his bank and that she would give him further instructions on how the funds would be disbursed.
“The first company, Auctus Integrated, deposited $17,884,000 into the bank. The second company, Northern Belt Gas Company, deposited $60m, while another company, Midwestern Oil and Gas, deposited $9.5m. A fourth company, Leno Laitan Adesanya, deposited $1.85m, while the MD himself received $26m in cash.”
The source alleged that Diezani’s son, Ugonna Madueke, later served as a middleman between the former minister and the MD of the bank.
He said it was Diezani’s son who forwarded the names of the beneficiaries of the funds, which included INEC officials and several interest groups as well as election monitors, who were expected to compromise the electoral process.
Additional report from Punch
