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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA
The House and the PEF Scandal
The Guardian of February 7 called it “misappropriation” but the shocking – albeit not altogether surprising--revelations about what started as the Presidential Committee on Police Equipment Fund (PCPEF) suggests that it is much worse; the revelations suggest that it may rank among the worst cases of racketeering perpetrated in Nigeria during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight years of misrule. To misappropriate, in its ordinary meaning, is, among other things, to steal, embezzle or swindle. From the look of things the PCPEF looks like all these - and more; it looks and smells like a classic case of making money through extortion, fraud and intimidation, etc. The PCPEF’s sordid story goes back before that day in February 2006 when President Obasanjo inaugurated the Fund with the principal objective of getting the private sector to contribute in cash and kind towards equipping the Nigerian Police Force. As is well known by now, the story began when three friends, Messrs Godwin Ewulum, Joseph Agharite and Ibrahim Dumuje, tried to sell the idea of a voluntary private sector funding of the equipment needs of the police to the disgraced and unlamented former Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun. Their target was a modest 50,000,000 Naira to buy protective armour for the police. Somehow the idea did not fly. Then, according to Ewulum in several of his media interviews, someone suggested they got in touch with Mr. Kehinde Lola Martins, aka Kenny Martins, then the estranged ex-brother-in-law of the president. They did and, as if by some miracle, their fortune took-off. However, this has since turned into a nightmare for the Fund managers and for all those complicit in their profligate ways. According to Ewulum, Martins reportedly told the initiators that 50 million Naira was peanuts. Martins himself has confirmed this in many of his media interviews. For the scheme to make sense, he has said, the sums had to be big time. Otherwise, it was not worth taking to his ex-brother-in-law whose presidential imprimatur was necessary because of the security implications of financing a key police need. At that time, Martins was, as I said, estranged from his ex-brother-in-law who was once married to his twin sister. This was because of widespread reports that he was fond of dropping his (Obasanjo’s) name for private gain. As a result he was banned not only from Aso Villa but from the presidential presence as well. How Martins, who was then Secretary-General of the opposition National Democratic Party, overcame this obstacle must be one of those mysterious ways in which politics moves. But overcome the obstacle he did. And so in February 2006, the president inaugurated the PCPEF. Somehow Martins managed to appoint himself its national coordinator. It must be said, however, that from the word go everything was wrong with the scheme. To begin with, the idea itself was shot through and through with a huge potential for conflict of interest for the simple reason than any private donor could be a candidate for police investigation and prosecution. The Nigeria Police Force as an instrument for maintaining law and order is and should be the sole responsibility of government. Therefore any government that cannot appropriate enough funds for the efficient running of its police force is as good as useless. Of course, policing does not come cheap but it does not have to cost an arm either like ours does essentially because of waste and corruption. Therefore the solution to the under funding of our police should never have been sought for in the private sector. However, not only was it wrong to go bowl in hand to the private sector for funding the needs of the police, the begging bowl itself was entrusted into the wrong hands. Of the four-some who initiated the idea, namely, Ewulum, Agharite, Dumuje and, subsequently, Martins, none was known to have a record of spotless public service. For that reason alone there should have been a diligent search of their past by the authorities before they were entrusted with managing the fund. Of the four, Agharite died in an air crash before the fund could properly take off. Ewulum has since become the group’s whistle blower more because he has been sidelined by Martins and Dumuje than because of his concern for accountability. This much should be obvious to any one who has followed his unrelenting media war against the other two. As for Martins and Dumuje, each has had question marks over at least one of their past business deals. Martins once ran a non-governmental organization affiliated to the Abacha regime, The Pathfinder, whose questionable financial accounting procedure became a source of strife between himself and key intelligence officers of the regime like Brigadier-General Ibrahim Sabo. On his part, Dumuje was once reported on the internet to have had a warrant for his arrest for fraud in the United States as far back as 2001. Such records should have urged caution on the part of the authorities in buying into their initiative. Because the idea itself was wrong to begin with and because it was entrusted into hands that were not exactly squeaky-clean, it was hardly surprising that the PCPEF soon degenerated into a huge racket. To begin with it was truly amazing how, by Martins own admission, they could go borrowing tens of millions of Naira merely to set up shop in anticipation of the donations. Even more amazing, however, was how the banks could so easily oblige Martins and Co, when there were no cast iron guarantees that the Fund would become viable. According to Martins himself, he and his partners, “borrowed N50,000,000 from First Inland Bank to set up the secretariat. Additional N150,000,000 was raised from Zenith Bank for vehicles, publicity, salaries and logistics for over one year. In fact we were in debt to the tune of N250,000,000 before we raised one kobo.” (Thisday September 23, 2007). If Martins and Co could spend so much money with such reckless abandon merely to set up shop, is it any surprise that so many shocking revelations have been coming out of the House of Representatives’ investigations into the management of the Fund? Shocking though it is, should it surprise anyone that the Fund would allegedly spend five billion Naira on car gifts to movers and shakers of society and to governmental institutions? Or that it would blow away over 200 million Naira for a pre-launch dinner? Or that two helicopters it reportedly bought for the police from the Ukraine Republic would disappear into thin air? Martins’ lawyers, Messrs Tunde Abayomi and Michael Ozeokhome, have been telling the federal legislators that they have no business investigating the Fund because it is a private initiative. Really? If it was so private why did it receive the ten million Naira that was deducted from each of the country’s 774 local governments on the instructions of Martins’ ex-brother-in-law? And what about all those parastatals that must have felt obliged to “donate” to the Fund because of its endorsement by the president? And those banks it borrowed money from, aren’t there banking laws in the country which regulate how they should lend money without jeopardizing the interests of their shareholders and depositors? Even more seriously, has Martins not boasted to the world that because of his business savvy, countries like China and America have fallen over themselves to lend the Fund money? “And let me reveal to you,” he said in the same Thisday interview I quoted above, “since we became a foundation the funds have been coming. The Chinese are giving us $500 million and will provide 100 units of houses (worth $3 billion) through the Foundation. The United States Exim Bank (through Society-Generale Bank) is giving us loans to the tune of $97 million for armour carrier planes” (whatever that is). If Martins is too loudmouthed to think about the grave implications of his boast for Nigeria’s financial autonomy and integrity, surely his lawyers should know that regulating foreign loans is an exclusive preserve of the National Assembly. Surely too they should know that these loans invariably come with all sorts of strings attached which may not be in Nigeria’s best interests. In any case where on earth has anyone ever heard of a foundation, which Martins said he had since transformed the Fund into, operating on loans no matter how soft? Foundations, by definition, are non-profit organizations and so should operate on donations and grants only and eventually become viable by wisely investing these. The Presidential Committee on Police Equipment Fund or Police Equipment Foundation or whatever name its protagonist chose to call it, looks and smells like racketeering of the worst variety. As such Honourable C.I.D. Maduabum, the Chairman of the House Committee investigating the Fund and other members of the panel have their work cut out for them; they should establish how some people found it so easy to cynically exploit the needs of a government agency and in the process aggrandize themselves and those who were apparently complicit in their racketeering at the expense of the rest of us.
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