Bismarck Rewane, the brilliant business economist and chief
executive of Financial Derivatives Ltd based in Lagos, has joined the pantheon
of seers. Just before Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as Nigeria’s president on
May 29, 2015, he said on a program on Classic Radio 97.3 FM that many Nigerian
business executives would become ex-millionaires in a matter of months.
Rewane’s reason was simple: with Buhari’s creating a new social order based on
the rule of law and transparency, many government contractors would be out of
business. Truth be told, most of the contractors are just rent seekers,
business fronts of those in power.
Since the very day Buhari assumed office, Emeka Offor,
perhaps the most controversial government contractor from Anambra State ever,
has not paid staff salaries. Not only have his offices in Abuja closed down in
the past one year, as SaharaReporters has just accurately revealed, the
extremely flamboyant politician has not been able to bury his father who died
in February. He is determined to spend a fortune on the father’s burial, as he
did on January 3, 2015, when he celebrated his third marriage in his village
where very expensive musicians like P-Square and Flavor played.
The essence is so as to sustain the façade of
a super rich business tycoon, but the resources are unfortunately no longer
forthcoming. The simple truth is that Offor is now an ex millionaire. He is not
alone in this club of ex-millionaires, which, in fact, is growing rapidly.
Offor’s free fall became public knowledge because a lot of people have rather
been celebrating his predicament; this owes to his unsavory relationship with
not only family members but also most people from his hometown of Oraifite in
Ekwusigo Local Government Area of Anambra State. We will explain shortly why
his townspeople celebrate his present acute business crisis.
If it were in the days of the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP), Offor and other Aso Rock contractors, as President Buhari reportedly
described him before his chief of staff Abba Kyari, none of them would have
been allowed to experience any form of discomfort. The national treasury was
practically handed over to the so-called Big Boys by the PDP, which delighted
in referring to the rent seekers as party financiers. It was an era of culture
of impunity.
Here are just a few examples. Towards the end of May of 2014, the
National Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) ordered 22 banks in the country
where Offor’s Chrome Group had accounts to freeze them because of a 9.2 billion
naira debt owed the defunct African Express Bank (AFEX), owned by Offor. The
NDIC even went before Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court in
Abuja to enforce the order. However, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s “government magic”
came into play. The NDIC overnight accepted a paltry N1bn as full and final
payment for the N14bn debt. This was on June 12, 2014. No reason was given for
the acceptance. But everyone knew that Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency directed
the financial regulator to lay off a most beloved son.
In 2013, Offor’s Interstate Electrics was described by the
Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and the National Council on Privatization
(NCP) as grossly incapable of doing the business of electric power distribution
because it did not possess the technical competence or financial resources.
They, therefore, disqualified the consortium from bidding for any of the
country’s 11 electricity distribution companies. However, within 72 hours,
Jonathan’s presidency directed the NCP to declare Interstate the preferred
bidder for not just the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company but also the
Abuja Electricity Distribution Company. Interstate Electrics thus became the
first and only consortium to become the preferred bidder for two DisCos! The
Jonathan government then pleaded with Offor to choose the DisCo it wanted-- and
it picked Enugu. Does anyone still wonder why the privatization of Power
Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) assets under Jonathan remains a big mess to
this day, providing the nation more darkness than light?
Despite the blacklisting of Offor following the
recommendation of a committee headed by the legendary Aret Adams in the 1990s
for the monumental fraud and incompetence exhibited by his company in the
turn-around maintenance (TAM) contracts of both the 115,000 per day barrel
Warri and the 150,000 barrel per day New Port Harcourt refineries during the
Sani Abacha regime, the Jonathan government furtively awarded the TAM contract
for both the New Port Harcourt and the Old Port Harcourt 60,000 barrel per day
refinery to Offor’s Chrome in 2014 for an undisclosed amount.
It is safe to
assume that both the government which awarded the contract and the contractor
were not really interested in fixing the refineries because no attempt was made
to get the job done until Jonathan was defeated in the March 2015 presidential
election. With the defeat, Offor quickly mobilized to site and promised that
the refineries would come on stream in September, 2015. All the media in
Nigeria, both print and electronic, carried the propaganda with flourish. It is
almost a year now but there is absolutely nothing to show for it. The
rehabilitation was abandoned almost as soon as it started.
But Jonathan is not the only president who empowered Offor
with impunity. The Olusegun Obasanjo administration is perhaps more guilty.
Obasanjo gave him a ChevronTexaco oil bloc in his last days in 2007 on what The
Wall Street Journal called sweetheart terms. The deal became an international
scandal. In addition, Obasanjo awarded him the Bauchi-Yola electricity
transmission line job for a price that made the World Bank protest openly. The
same government handed over to him Nigeria’s interest in the Nigeria-Sao Tome
and Principe Joint Development Zone, enabling Offor to become the Lord of the
Manor in this small two-island nation.
Obasanjo also gave Offor contracts for
river channelization in Edo and Ondo states, among other places, which were not
executed despite full payments. Obasanjo’s government provided Offor with
police support and other forms of state assistance to fight the Chinwoke
Mbadinuju government in Anambra State from 1999 to 2003, so that the ground would
be prepared for Andy Uba, his Friday man, would become the state governor.
Therefore, it is very strange for Obasanjo to claim in an
interview with Premium Times published on August 5, 2015, to be innocent of
creating the Frankenstein monster known as Offor. No one is fooled by the
claim. It is known to many Nigerians that Offor had been boasting openly how he
capitalized on Obasanjo’s greed to deal with him ruthlessly. Offor has a
reputation of swindling public officers once they are out of power.
When former
Vice President Atiku Abubakar went to Offor’s Abuja residence three years ago
straight from Dubai to ask for his share of the businesses Offor did on his
behalf while he was in public office from 1999 to 2007, the government
contractor brought out a machete and threatened to slaughter Atiku. The ex vice
president fled for his life in broad daylight! Against this background,
political watchers are skeptical that ex-President Jonathan, his wife Patience
and erstwhile Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo would ever receive anything
from Offor who was their business agent when they were in government.
Finally, back to Offor’s relationship with his kinsmen in
Oraifite, Anambra State, who have been rejoicing since the controversial
government contractor fell on hard times. During in particular the time of
Mohammed D. Abubakar as the Inspector General of Police, many of our townsfolk
were arrested in a most humiliating manner and detained for months with
hardened criminals for having personal disagreements with Offor.
Some of these
individuals went to court against the police and won. It never ceases to amaze
one how M.D. Abubakar reduced the police leadership to a Gestapo in the hands
of a barely literate private individual, who was a driver with Julius Berger
construction firm. The consolation is that all our people deprived of their
humanity by the police are in the process of suing Offor and Abubakar to their
last kobo.
It says something profound about the culture of abomination
which the PDP imposed on Nigeria for a whole 16 years that so-called business
tycoons like Offor could not pay staff salaries from the very day Buhari became
Nigeria’s president. We salute Buhari for insisting on things being done
properly. The era of the Nigerian state serving as a cow to be milked almost to
death by a few rapacious individuals is gone. We are now in a new social order.
Ifeanacho wrote from Enugu.
Source: SR
Source: SR
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