GOVERNOR DONALD DUKE: SAINT OR SINNER?
Recently, the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC), through its Executive Chairman, Mr. Nuhu
Ribadu, presented its report to the National Assembly; the
report has indicted 31 governors in Nigeria on allegations of
corruption. The said report has raised more questions than
answers in Cross River State, in particular, where daily
discussions have been proceeding about the “clean bill” of
health pronounced for the Governor, Mr. Donald Duke. Opinions in
the state consider it curious that the said report has totally
exonerated Governor Duke; people are beginning to wonder if EFCC
is actually familiar with all the available facts. This paper is
therefore meant to raise, for the benefit of doubt, issues that
the EFCC are probably unfamiliar with, pertaining to the conduct
of public affairs and finances in the Cross River State of
Nigeria.
In Cross River State, probably only very few
people are ignorant about the billions of Naira that have
accrued to the State from federal allocations, privatizations,
loans, internally generated revenues (both from local government
and state government sources) ecological funds, and grants from
donor agencies as well as donations from public spirited
individuals. There is need therefore for the EFCC to
investigate, more thoroughly, the financial operations of the
government of Mr. Donald Duke in the last almost eight years and
ask for more information pertaining to the true nature of the
expenditure of these funds; we believe that the EFFC should not
allow itself to be guided only by the cosmetic type information
that it has so far received from the official public relations
organs of government. Evidence abounds to show that there are
economic and financial crime matters in the Cross River State of
Nigeria, probably unknown to the EFCC. It has become imperative
therefore, to guide the EFCC on the approach employed by the
governor to defraud the poor people of Cross River State of
their legitimate funds while the various government officials
are compelled to maintain “a conspiracy of silence” or risk
being “sacked” from work. Significantly, the EFCC should note
that after committing these various acts of fraud, government
officials are made to post fictitious accounting figures to
various heads and sub-heads in an apparent effort to balance the
accounts of the state expenditure. The accounts of the eighteen
local governments in the State have recently been harmonized for
the purpose of covering up these financial crimes. The above and
many other approaches has become a recurrence decimal in the
management of public funds in Cross River State.
For the
avoidance of doubt, the following specific issues are hereby
being submitted to the EFFC, for further consideration. It is
hoped that these issues will lead the EFCC to a better
understanding of the affairs of Cross River State, in order that
they could also reach a valid conclusions about the operations
of the government and the Governor.
a) The deduction of N360,000,000.00 from local
government allocations in the pretext of purchasing
the cable
car at the Obudu
Ranch Resort.
b) The monthly payment of N18,000,000.00 to the
Governor’s wife, Mrs. Onari Duke through her NGO
called
Enterprise Nigeria
Foundation with Head office at Plot 15E, Flat 2,
Muri Okunola Street, P. O. Box 71003,
Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria; and operational
office at Suit C9, Amin Building, Calabar Free Trade
Zone –CTZ,
Calabar. For the
month of November 2005, this amount was paid vide
Cheque No: 00000714 of Guaranty
Trust Bank – GTB, Calabar, dated 06-01-2006.
c) The monthly deductions of N42,968,036.53 meant
for the poor communities and people of Cross River
State
from the local
government joint account as equity participation of
Councils in the Tinapa project.
d) The
arbitrary deduction of N62,812,531.51 from the local
government joint account as loan repayment for
the Tinapa project for the month of September 2005,
vide Guaranty Trust Bank GTB.
e) The
inexplicable deduction of N50, 810,121.76 from the
local government joint account vied Guarantee
Trust Bank – GTB in favour of Citizens International
Bank.
f) The unauthorized deduction of
N62,575,342.40 as Tinapa loan repayment for the
month of August, 2005,
vide
Guaranty Trust Bank.
g) The unauthorized
deduction of N50,810,121.76 at source from the LGA
joint account as loan repayment
for the month of July 2005, vide Guaranty Trust
Bank.
h) The unauthorized deduction of
N50,810,121.76 from the local government joint
account (meant for the
poor
rural and forest dependent communities) as loan
repayment for Tinapa for the month of July 2005,
vied GTB in favour of Citizens International Bank
Plc for August 2005.
i) The unauthorized
deduction of N63,505,013.70 at source from the LGA
joint account as loan repayment
for
Tinapa for the month of July 2005, vide Guaranty
Trust Bank;
j) The unauthorized deduction of
N143, 267,132.29 from the local government
allocations vide Guaranty Trust
Bank in favour of Citizens International Bank Plc
for the months of June and July.
k) The unauthorized deduction of N70,028,538.81 from the
local government joint account vide Guaranty
Trust Bank in favour of Citizens International Bank
Plc for the month of August 2005.
l) The unauthorized deduction of N61,279,178.08 from the
local government joint account as loan repayment
for Tinapa vide Guaranty Trust Bank Plc. |
Supporting documents including vouchers
pertaining to items (a – l) sited above have already been
forwarded to EFCC and ICPC for appropriate investigation.
Therefore it would appear that the alleged pronouncement of the
EFCC on the Cross River State Governor is hasty because any
information to the contrary will endanger the integrity of the
EFCC locally, nationally and internationally. For the avoidance
of doubts therefore, the EFCC should justify its claims by
deliberately investigating the financial operations and records
of Mr. Donald Duke. The EFCC, whose corporate integrity comes
into question in the event of failure to recover huge sums of
public funds, must be concerned. The following are specific
areas of concern in this context:
i. A situation
where huge sums of public funds allocated for poor
rural communities is being diverted monthly for the
Governor’s wife (Mrs. Onari Duke) for personal use
and expensive life styles while the poor people
languish in abject poverty and penury is fraudulent
and should be investigated as a matter of urgent
public interest. This is important because
expenditure of over four hundred and eighty million
naira [N480, 000,000.00] by Enterprise Nigeria
Foundation (an NGO owned and managed by Onari Duke)
without definite policy guidelines and presentations
to the council authorities for ratification and
approvals questions the transparency of the
Governor’s operations.
ii. A situation where
huge sums of local government funds meant for poor
communities are being diverted from the local
government joint account for personal use in the
pretext of loan repayment amount to fraud. The
urgent question at this point is: Who authorized and
received the loans on behalf of the 18 local
government councils? What were the loans meant for
and how much was actually taken? When will the
repayment terminate?
iii. A situation where
local government statutory allocations are being
budgeted to undertake specific operations by the
various council chairmen to meet the needs and
aspirations of their poor communities, and these
funds are being diverted to undertake an unbudgeted
operation, i.e. to purchase the cable car at the
Ranch Resort ostensibly to play Chief Executive and
meet the recreation needs of the rich class, is
outrageous and tends to raise very serious questions
of budget discipline and financial prudence. The
pertinent question therefore is: do the poor people
of Cross River State really need/use the Cable Car?
iv. A situation where the local government
chairmen who are the accounting officers of their
various councils are being prevented from
maintaining clear records of actual expenses of
their programmes and activities, questions the
TRANSPARENCY of the Government of Mr. Donald Duke.
Indeed a scenario where hundreds of millions of
naira are being signed off single handedly without
recourse to, and due approvals from the appropriate
council authorities amounts to a breach of trust and
should be investigated.
v. A situation where
the Ministry of Local Government Affairs arbitrarily
disburses hundreds of millions of Naira meant for
local government councils calls for urgent
investigation.
vi. A practice where public
property are being grossly under valued and
privatized to unknown persons in disregard to the
appropriate policy procedures for the sale of public
property should be viewed seriously by the EFCC and
indeed the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission,
ICPC. For instance, who bought Metropolitan Hotel
Calabar (a six storey building in a prime location,
precisely opposite the Governor’s office; adjacent
the stadium and international conference centre as
well as the Millennium Park; accessible to over ten
banks and the Calabar airport) valued over N2
Billion naira but sold at only N200,000,000.00 even
when General Ukpo had offered to buy the same
property at N600,000,000.00? What is even more
provoking is that this same property was renovated
during the junior World Cup tournament hosted by
Nigeria in 1999 at the cost of over N400,000,000.00.
If Metro Calabar was sold at a loss of 2 billion
naira in public funds, what was the rationale behind
the decision? Is government not constituted to
safeguard the overall interests of the people? In
what way does the act of foregoing 2 billion naira
amount to safeguarding the overall interests of the
people? Does the act of foregoing 2 billion of
public money amount to transparency in the conduct
of public business? Importantly, who bought
Metropolitan Hotel, Calabar? This is indeed a
classical case for urgent investigation.
vii.
A practice where public properties sold for a grand
total of N1,291,000,000.00, and consultancy alone
gulped a whooping N1,258,449,687.00 remaining a
balance of N32,550,313.00 only, as revenue to
government is unacceptable.
viii. A practice
where huge sums of public funds meant for poor rural
people are being diverted by Mr. Donald Duke for
private and personal investments, i.e. for the
construction of the ADMIRALTY TOWERS (three sets of
high rise luxury flats) located at No. 9A Gerard
Road, Ikoyi, in Lagos, is fraudulent. Mr. Duke rents
out these flats at $5,000 per flat each month. For
the avoidance of doubt, SHELL Petroleum is one of
his tenants and has already paid rents for two years
amounting to $960,000. This is a clear case of Mr.
Duke putting his personal interest before public
good. It is unacceptable and should be investigated
urgently.
ix. A practice where government
contracts are over-priced arbitrarily for personal
gains is fraudulent. For instance, it was initially
announced to the public that the construction cost
of Tinapa is N25 Billion. Sadly, Mr. Duke now claims
that the cost has arisen to N65 Billion, perhaps to
justify his monthly deductions of local government
allocations.
x. A situation where Banks in
Calabar are being threatened and penalized for
refusing to contribute N200 Million each to support
the Tinapa project should be investigated.
xi. A situation where the Governor’s wife and
brother are contracted to handle multi-billion naira
Christmas carnival shows, the so called People
Empowerment Programme (PEPI), architectural and
construction projects (through Hameg consultants and
COGEDS which bare a striking resemblance with HEGEDS,
the company Donald Duke operated with office at 6
Razaq Balogone Street, Surulere Lagos, before he
became governor) in Cross River State tends to raise
very serious questions of ethics. The disclosure
policy is instituted as a system of checks and
balances to circumvent actual or potential conflict
of interest. The provisions of the disclosure policy
are very clear on matters such as this. Under this
policy, the Governor is expected to make known his
interest with persons or groups doing business with
his government. This means that His Excellency who
has actual or potential conflict of interest should
not participate in decisions or vote on matters
affecting any transaction (s) between his government
and the other person or group. The danger in the
Governor not making his interest known is that he
may connive with such persons or groups to the
detriment of the state. Therefore the appointment of
Mrs. ONARI DUKE and GEORGE DUKE to undertake
multi-billion naira projects for the government of
Cross River State would appear to be prejudicial to
the disclosure policy, and indeed a clear case of
conflict of interest. |
The inability of the National Assembly
to amend the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to
empower the local government council chairmen and their
councilors specifying clear functions and regulatory procedures
for checks and balances regarding disbursements of local
government funds has developed into a situation where Mr. Donald
Duke through the Ministry of Local government Affairs expends
council funds arbitrarily while the chairmen are compelled to
retire such expenditure. In other words we have in the past
almost eight years; run the risk of operating local government
councils for whose financial operations the democratically
elected Chairmen do not possess any legal instrument for
expenditure.
It should be noted that billions of Naira
accruing to the state government from statutory allocation are
available for Governor Donald Duke to initiate any project his
administration considers relevant for his people. It should
equally be noted that already Billions of Naira as loans have
been sourced from financial institutions and expended on the
Ranch Resort and Tinapa projects. It would be recalled that
Bonds were also floated for the purpose of enhancing the
viability of the projects. It is therefore carious to see that
local government allocations intended for the rural poor
populations are being deducted arbitrarily in the pretext of
purchasing the cable car for the Ranch Resort project and also
funding the Tinapa project. The issue of deducting local
government funds for the project should not arise. The
deductions made on local government funds for the purported
cable car and Tinapa projects involve huge financial commitment
that would require appropriate authorizations from the various
local governments ab-initio. Therefore the following questions
are pertinent:
vAre
Tinapa and the Ranch Resort Projects public investments or
private investments?
vIf
they are private investments, then are the funds of Local
Governments properly secured within the
structure of
the private investments? What sorts of securities or
guarantees have been provided or so
far been given?
Are the guarantees available in the records of the councils for
the benefit of future generations?
vIf
Local Government funds have been committed into Tinapa and the
Ranch Resort, upon what authorities
were the funds
committed? Local governments are supposed to have budgets for
their annual expenditures;
local government funds are
supposed to be spent in accordance with specified procedures
spelt out in the
constitution of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria. Therefore, have the Chairmen received approvals of
their
respective councils for the expenditure on
Tinapa and the Ranch projects?
vIf
Tinapa and the Ranch Resort are government projects, then is
government well advised to commit the state
and the
local governments to new investment projects? Is it not curious
therefore that this is happening at a
time that all
the previous investments of previous governments are currently
being privatized? The compelling
question is: can a
government be investing in new ventures and privatizing old
ventures at the same time?
Is this not a manifest
display of contradictions in the art of governance?
vAre
Tinapa and the Ranch Resort more viable and more profitable to
the local people in the LGA’s in the short
term and
in the long run, than other projects?
LOANS
In respect of the loan portfolio of Cross River State, it is
evident that there are huge burdens
of loans already
incurred on behalf of this and future generations of the poor
people of the
state. By this development, the State is
totally mortgaged and, invariably, future
administrations
are saddled with the burden duty of repaying these loans, sadly
at source
from Federal Allocations. As previously
highlighted, Mr. Donald Duke has had the
privilege of
receiving huge bank loans and floated bonds on behalf of the
poor people of the
state. It should be necessary therefore
to act transparently to notify Cross Riverians of
details of
the loan portfolio namely: the source of loan, amount involved,
the repayment
schedule as well as the general conditions
including interest rates. It is curious that the
governor
have not considered it prudent to publish this information for
the benefit of Cross
Riverians, on who the huge burdens of
loans are ultimately visited.
Privatization
Records from the Cross River Privatization Council show that
between 2002 and 2006 the following public properties have been
sold arbitrarily:
1 CREL Plc 500,000,000.00
2 Niger
Mills Plc 300,000,000.00
3 Calvenply 70,000,000.00
4
Biakpan Rubber Estate 40,000,000.00
5 Equity Guest House
30,000,000.00
6 Oban Rubber Estate 50,000,000.00
7 Cross
Lines Limited 11,800,000.00
8 Cross Lines (Real Estates
Quarters) 15,000,000.00
9 Equity Gas Plant 9,100,000.00
10
Equity Guest House 30,000,000.00
11 Metropolitan Hotel,
Calabar 200,000,000.00
12 Metropolitan Hotel, Ikom
23,100,000.00
13 Kwafalls Palm Oil Estate 12,000,000.00
Grand Total N1,291,000,000.00
In addition to the above, the following public properties
have also been sold without any trace of the funds being paid to
the state treasury as a result of the sales:
a) The Calabar
Cement Company Ltd, CALCEMCO
b) The Cross River State
Newspaper Co-operation
c) The Government Printing Press
d) The Cross River
Liaison office in Lagos
e) The Cross River State property at
No.3, Military Street, near Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos
f)
Numerous residential buildings and vast area of lands designated
for building purposes owned by the Cross River State government
have been sold to fronts of Mr. Donald Duke.
ETHICS IN THE CONDUCT OF
PUBLIC BUSINESS
v
At a time when the watchword of government is poverty
alleviation – in what ways do all the above contribute to
alleviating poverty among the masses of Cross River
State and its local governments?
v
At a time when the overall posture of government is
privatization, is it ethical to be privatizing and investing at
the
same time? Will the new investments
not end up again in privatization shortly?
THE EFCC
It is my understanding that as the agency responsible for
monitoring and exposing economic
and financial crimes in our
dear country, it is the duty of EFCC among other things to
investigate appropriately the financial operations of our public
officers before reaching a
valid conclusion. To pronounce a
clean bill of health on Mr. Donald Duke on the excuse
that
there has been no petition from Cross River State against the
Governor amounts to a
deliberate concealment and a grand
conspiracy against the severely impoverished people of
Cross
River State of Nigeria. Nevertheless, the facts have now been
put before the EFCC
for consideration. The EFCC should
therefore assume greater responsibility and share a
commitment to its mission to cause appropriate investigation on
the matter with a view to
recovering the huge amount of
monies belonging to the poor local people of
Cross River
State. It has become necessary to draw the attention of the EFCC
to facts
above because the EFCC is the only properly
constituted authority mandated by the Laws of
the Federal
Republic of Nigeria under PART II, Section 7, sub-section “a”,
of the EFCC
ACT 2004 to cause investigations on matters such
as this.
PRAYER
Our prayer therefore is as follows:
1. That the EFCC should compel the Cross River State
Governor to open his financial records for investigation
as an
urgent matter of public interest.
2. That the 18 local
government council chairmen in Cross River State should as well
be compelled to open
their financial records for appropriate
investigations.
3. That in the cause of carrying out the
investigations, the civil society, public servants and civil
servants as
well should be requested to forward useful memoranda
to aid the process.
4. That only such procedure can help the
EFCC to investigate and present an unbiased position on Governor
Donald Duke.
Finally, governments serve the broad public
good, and the EFCC is established primarily to investigate,
expose and restrain fraudulent governments from engaging in any
matters that are detrimental to public trust. The EFCC should
respond to their moral and constituted responsibility to ensure
prudent management of local government finances and indeed
public finances belonging to the poor rural people of Cross
River State of Nigeria. Based on the available facts highlighted
herein above, It is fervently hoped that the EFCC would respond
to this matter of the Governor of Cross River State regarding
the transparency and morality of his operations in the
disbursement of public funds in order that the public will be in
a position to adjudge Mr. Donald Duke SAINT OR SINNER..
Fredrick Osari
Executive Chairman
fredosaraqua@yahoo.com
CROSS RIVER STATE ANTI-CORRUPTION
NETWORK
Suit 5, Cultural Centre Complex, Calabar Cross River
State, Nigeria
|
