That Foul Kebbi Liaison Office Deal!
By
Abdullahi Usman
“The only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling ourselves that we fool somebody”. - Booth Tarkington
As patriotic and concerned citizens interested in the well being and welfare of our dear compatriots, I believe that we owe it as a point of duty to always speak out whenever we observe an action has either been taken or is about to be taken that will, in our opinion, not serve the best interest of the population. It is in the light of this that I feel obliged to once again intervene in the brewing controversy resulting from the rather strange and, some would argue, unilateral decision to sell the Kebbi State Liaison Office located at No. 3, Adeola Odeku Street, Victoria Island, Lagos. This, of course, is in line with the valuable advice by the 1999 Nobel Laureate, Gunter Grass, that: “the job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open”.
The recent sale of the said building, which was only communicated to the public on the eve of the formal handover of power to the new government on May 29, 2007, is already generating series of angry reactions from concerned stakeholders both at home and abroad for three main reasons:
To Sell or Not To Sell?
The first reason has
to do with the propriety of the decision to go ahead and sell the Liaison
Office in the first place. This is in view of its apparent strategic
importance to both the Kebbi State Government itself and the state
indigenes that may have cause to use the facility at one time or another
during their stay in Lagos. Liaison Offices have historically served as
transit residences for Governors and their family whenever they visit
Lagos and some states have even gone ahead to build separate Governor’s
Lodges for this purpose. Granted, such visits by the Kebbi State Chief
Executives may have reduced considerably following the relocation of the
Federal Capital to
Abuja,
but they have still had one reason or another to visit the nation’s
commercial capital since then. That may have informed the decision by the
same government to invest the sum of
In addition, the building also provides temporary accommodation for government officials either visiting Lagos or in transit to other parts of the world via the Murtala Mohammed International Airport located within the city. Only recently, students from the state on government scholarships to study in India were indeed lodged there before they eventually jetted out of the country. Sometimes, the shelter provided by the building may actually constitute the difference between life and death as our fellow indigenes living in Idi Araba, who took refuge under its relative safety during the sectarian violence that engulfed their locality some years back, can easily testify. It is a well known fact that most states still retain their respective liaison offices for the above reasons, while some such as Niger, Benue, Kwara and a few others have even gone further to convert parts of their buildings to guest houses for commercial considerations. Was Due Process Followed?
Another major issue of immediate concern is whether or not the much talked about necessary due process was followed in the build up to the eventual conclusion of the transaction. From available feelers one is getting, the entire transaction may have been concluded sometime in December 2006 via a dubious bid process. However, for reasons that are still not clear, the then state government only revealed information about the sale on its last official day in office on May 28, 2007, during which it made reference to a curious State Executive Council Resolution of May 23, 2007 approving the transaction.
Numerous attempts at corroborating the veracity of this information from a variety of sources have indeed revealed that no such issue was tabled before the Exco and there could thus not have been any resolution passed to that effect on the said date. If that is so, it can only mean that the entire transaction is suspect ab initio, and I am aware of the resolve by some concerned indigenes of the state to employ all available legal means at their disposal to challenge the transaction with a view to getting it reversed.
Who Exactly Bought the Property?
From the records of
the sale released by the State Government, it was indicated that the
property Office was sold to a Kaduna - based company called AMX Group,
with offices located at Zadina House, No. 20, Ali Akilu Road. This
company, owned by a hitherto unknown individual called Mallam Abubakar
Bako Mohammed, purchased the building for the sum of
A new twist was, however, added to the transaction when officials managing the Liaison Office received information on Monday, June 4, 2007 that Diamond Bank Plc was about to replace the security guards manning the gates with its own security outfit. Information later filtered out that the AMX Group had resold the property to the bank, which demonstrated its zeal to take immediate possession of the building by volunteering to provide trucks free of charge to enable the tenants move out their valuables.
The entire deal smells, if you ask me, and this is glaringly evident in the negative reactions that have continued to trail it. Already, some ranking traditional rulers and other highly placed indigenes, who are apparently not convinced by the official version of the sale story, have reportedly voiced their opposition to the deal and also went on to demand for its immediate reversal. This is certainly very commendable because it is often said that if you don’t stand up for something, you will surely fall for everything. Indeed, as the old saying goes, a thousand houseflies cannot go wrong; when it’s smelly, they surely come rushing!
Whereas Diamond Bank
would rather have us believe that it bought the property and made payment
directly to the state government, records released by the same government
indicate that the building was indeed sold to the AMX Group. This can only
mean one thing: the AMX Group merely acted as a front and may indeed have
had no financial wherewithal to purchase the property; that much has
already been confirmed by a very senior member of the past government.
This, of course, raises several posers which Diamond Bank may do well to
quickly clarify in its own overall best interest. Why, for instance, would
the bank allow itself to be used in a transaction that will, at best,
raise serious questions about its corporate integrity? Why would the bank
not bid for the building directly, if indeed it was interested in buying
it? How much did it pay for the building? This, of course, includes any
other funds the bank may have paid AMX Group over and above the
The Way Forward
It goes without saying that this entire deal stinks to high heavens and the interest of the new government will be better served by distancing itself from the sale in view of its apparent hazy nature. In so doing, the only thing that should preoccupy its mind is a decision that will serve the overall best interest of the state. It is often said that the only way to settle a disagreement is on the basis of what is right - not who is right. It stands to reason that the right thing to do at this point in time is to safeguard our collective commonwealth by discountenancing any possible personal or political considerations and reversing it wholesale. As Alexsandr Slozhenitsyn rightly observed, “the line separating good and evil passes neither through states, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart”.
The new government must also learn some useful lessons from the mistakes of its predecessor by ensuring that it does not take similar actions that tend to insult our collective intelligence or treat us as a bunch of individuals whose grey matter has ceased to matter! Wlliam Gladstone spoke well on the need to balance political decisions with moral considerations when he argued that “nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right”.
In conclusion, whenever it pleases Allah to place us in positions of leadership, we must always strive to lead by example. This, we can achieve, by ensuring that we put public interest over and above private considerations in any action we may take as leaders. Albert Schweitzer had admonished ages ago that “example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing”. That may, of course, be easier said than done but it remains the only viable route to the hearts of the people whose affairs we have the rare privilege of presiding over, and will surely make it that much easier for all of us when we are eventually called upon to give account of our stewardship on the Final Day of Judgment. In the words of Harry S. Truman, “in reading about the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves!”
Abdullahi Usman (June 6, 2007)
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