By Jiti Ogunye
This is a press statement in reaction to the news in the electronic and print media on the 11th and 12th of August, 2011 to the effect that Mrs. Sharon Adefunke Kasali, the Executive Secretary of Petroleum Equalisation Fund was arrested and detained by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the EFCC in connection with economic and financial crimes and corrupt practices.
We wish to state that contrary to the report, Mrs. Kasali was not arrested and is not being detained in connection with any alleged commission of crimes, as widely reported in the media on the 11th and 12th of August.
Mrs. Kasali was invited, vide a letter of invitation, signed on behalf of the Executive Chairman of the EFCC by the Officer in Charge of the Executive Chairman’s Monitoring Unit, located at FCDA, Abuja FCT. Previously, officers of PEF had been invited for questioning, and allowed to go home.
Upon voluntarily honouring the invitation in the company of her lawyer, Jiti Ogunye, Mrs. Kasali was confronted with an anonymous and unsigned petition written, by a so-called Concerned PEF Staff.
After a preliminary interview with the Executive Chairman’s Monitoring Unit of the EFCC, and a written statement volunteered by Mrs. Kasali, Mrs. Kasali was made to fill in an Asset Declaration Form, and requested to surrender her international passports, upon disclosing that she had wanted to travel out for official reasons. She did that by surrendering both her personal international passport and her official passport. She was granted bail in her own self-recognizance, and allowed to go home. In consequence of this development, Mrs. Kasali had to cancel her scheduled trip in order to deal with this new phase of the war that has relentlessly been waged against her since her assumption of office, as Executive Secretary of PEF
On Friday, 12th of August 2011, Mrs. Kasali was at work to perform her duties as the Executive Secretary of PEF. In the evening of Friday, however, Mrs. Kasali was asked to come back to the EFCC Team for further questioning and was released that same night.
Before addressing the issue raised in the unsigned petition, it would be necessary to find out who Mrs. Sharon Adefunke Kasali really is.
Mrs. Sharon Adefunke Kasali is a chartered accountant of international repute. In 1986, she completed a Bachelor degree in Business Administration & Accounting from Texas Southern University and obtained a Master of Business Administration in Finance and MIS in University of Houston , Graduate School of Business in 1991. She was certified as a public accountant the same year. She started her work career in the United States of America with the globally renowned accounting organization, Arthur Andersen. She later joined Exxon Mobil in the United States . She was later transferred to Mobil Africa. She worked in Nigeria, France and Kenya and rose to the position of East Africa Regional Director of Finance, Exxon Mobil Africa. At the Zenith of her work, there, she had seven Finance Directors reporting to her. She left Exxon Mobil in 2004 and joined Nigeria Sao Tome Principe Joint Development Authority as Deputy Director Audit. It was from this position she was appointed to the position of Executive Secretary PEF in March 2007.
Before we address the spurious and false allegations contained in the petition, we are indeed amazed that the EFCC could leave the mountain of glaring cases of corruption evident in government business at all levels in Nigeria and start making a needless fuss over an anonymous petition. While we agree that Section 7 of the EFCC Act grants the Commission extensive investigation powers, we are of the opinion that the Commission lacks the power to act on an anonymous petition, that is baseless and with no face attached to it, while several petitions written and signed by known persons are being ignored. Doing so portrays the EFCC as a manipulated tool for witch-hunting and persecuting innocent persons.
We now address the allegations in the unsigned anonymous petition.
As incredible as it may appear, the first allegation in the anonymous petition being “investigated” by the EFCC is that the tenure of Mrs Kasali as the Executive Secretary of PEF is over, and that contrary to “procedure”, she has refused to hand-over to the most senior General Manager in PEF. It was claimed that a petition against her stay in office beyond her tenure had been sent to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum, and that the Permanent Secretary had set up an investigation panel headed by a senior official in the Ministry to investigate the Petition.
Of course, Mrs. Kasali debunked this preposterous allegation. For the avoidance of any doubt, the position of Executive Secretary of PEF is not a tenured position under the Statute establishing PEF. Mrs. Kasali was appointed to her current position four years ago, in April 2007, for an unspecified period of time. Very instructively, her predecessor in office, was in that position for eleven (11) unbroken years, until he was removed from office. And there is no record that when he was to be removed from office, the EFCC, that was in existence then, was hired to hound him out of office, by an anonymous group peddling about a frivolous petition.
The second allegation in the petition is that the sum of N400 million was found in Mrs Kasali’s personal bank accounts and that the sums of N50 million and N30 million were found in some other accounts linked to her. We categorically state that this is an outright falsehood and a wicked lie. Mrs. Kasali operates two personal bank accounts and the combined total amount of funds in the accounts is below N4 million, out of which =N= 1.6 Million is a rent, just collected on a property jointly owned with her husband. If the EFCC, or the unseen hand, instigating the EFCC to embark on this malevolent course, disputes this, we challenge the EFCC to disprove this claim and to please publish these accounts being bandied about.
Another allegation is that Mrs. Kasali forces oil marketers to make donations to Diamond Lights Women Empowerment Initiative. Diamond Lights Empowerment Initiative is an NGO founded by Mrs. Kasali in 2005 (two clear years before she got her present appointment) out of her conviction that indigent young women from all works of life needed empowerment. The objective of Diamond Lights is to assist women in removing circumstantial limitations placed on them by society thereby helping them reach their God-given potentials in life. For the past four years, Diamond Lights have been actively involved in teaching, advocacy and mentoring activities, information exchange and educational programmes aimed at bringing issues affecting women from a cross-section of society to public view and empowering their minds to overcome obstacles. Diamond Lights is not a front for money laundering. http://diamondlights.org/index.php
Though she is the founder, Mrs. Kasali does not personally run the organization as alleged. In the past six years, over 150 young ladies have enjoyed scholarships into various tertiary institutions in Nigeria. This NGO is funded via contributions from individuals, private organizations and multinationals. And right from its inception to date, the total amount of monetary donation made to the organization is not in excess of N15 million. We have in our possession the 2010 audited account of Diamond Light Empowerment Initiative. If the EFCC or the instigator or manipulator of the EFCC knows of any account being held by this organization in any bank in Nigeria or abroad, we, again challenge the EFCC or the hidden instigator to publish such bank accounts. The question, therefore, is into what accounts have the alleged donations of the oil marketers to the organization been paid?
Before Mrs. Kasali was appointed the Executive Secretary of PEF, the organization had a history of not paying oil marketers the transportation differentials for petroleum products movement from depots to their sales outlets in order to ensure the products are sold at uniform prices across the country. We should state here that this is the basic reason for which PEF was set up. The situation at PEF before Mrs. Kasali’s assumption of duty as the head of the organization was that marketers were owed for upward of nine months. But as today, oil marketers are being paid for liftings made in June 2011. When then did it become a crime to pay oil marketers as the statute of PEF demands? We also challenge any oil marketer with proof of any inducement to Mrs. Kasali to please come forward and say so.
We now address the allegation that Mrs. Kasali used proxies to set up companies to which she selectively awarded contracts from PEF. Again this is another outright falsehood. Truth is that the Federal Government’s standard procedure for the award of contracts, is that every contract award must follow the due process. All the contracts awarded by the PEF under Mrs. Kasali followed due process. Advertorials were placed in the media calling for tenders of bids. Bid winners were publicly announced after going through a rigorous screening exercise by the Board of the PEF.
The good people of Nigeria need to know that the real reason behind the so called investigation of Mrs. Kasali by the EFCC is to harass, intimidate and hound her out of office, or force her removal from office by portraying her as a fraud. There is a Conspiracy in the system that desperately wants her job. The Conspiracy has labeled itself PEF Crusaders and has been generating a lot of hate misinformation against Mrs. Kasali. Immediately, Mrs. Kasali honoured the EFCC’s invitation on Thursday, the 11th of August, 2011, the Conspiracy went to town and did a massive retailing of the story of Mrs. Kasali’s Arrest for fraud in the media. Just today, the canard was further orchestrated in Business Day, which reported that Mrs. Kasali’s international passports had been seized and that she is being put under surveillance to generate a public impression that a “ big thief that is about to take flight is being restrained from fleeing a crime scene” The calculation of this Conspiracy is that once Mrs. Kasali is sufficiently demonized or scandalized in the public, and tainted with allegation of corruption, she would either resign in anger and frustration, or be removed from office by an overwhelmed Government. The case of a former Minister of Health, Professor Adenike Grange and the ex commissioners of the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, who were charged by the EFCC to court for corruption but cleared for want of evidence, are instructive precedents in this regard. In both cases, the damage had been done before their exoneration.
This conspiracy has practically done everything both physical and metaphysical in the last four years to get rid of Mrs. Kasali. At a point, owing to threats to her life, Mrs. Kasali had to seek extra police protection from the office of the Inspector-General of Police. The grouse of this Conspiracy is that the institution is a cash cow which belongs to them, and that Mrs. Kasali’s ethical standards and uprightness is an obstacle to corrupt enrichment. The Conspiracy is, therefore, crusading that a stranger like Mrs. Kasali should be allowed to head the organization.
The good woman and patriot, Mrs. Kasali that this evil Conspiracy is traducing pioneered the introduction of e-payment system into the financial transactions of the Federal Government. As Executive Secretary, she was compelled to introduce an e-loading system titled “Project Aquila” to checkmate the corrupt practice of presentation of fictitious claims by marketers, Before her tenure, the practice that was rife was that some marketers would sell their products at the depots, and yet present bridging cost claims that they “incurred” in transporting products to their retail outlets in far flung places all over the Country. Through that fraudulent practice, the Federal Government of Nigeria was losing billions of naira. This is what is known as “bridging by air”. Apart from ensuring a tighter claims verification regime, Project Aquila will also help a great deal in eliminating corruption and ensuring prompt payment of bridging cost. Under this system, presentations of fake claims and other inefficiencies will be eliminated.
Apart from introducing the e-payment and e-loading systems, Mrs. Kasali also initiated a process that led to the computation of money owed petroleum marketers between 2004 and 2008, totaling N17.4 billion and took swift action to ensure that the outstanding amounts were paid. Her administration put in place a regulation that bridging costs claims by marketers are time-barred, and must be presented within nine months; otherwise the claims will lapse. Except on exceptional grounds and for proven justifiable and good reasons for delay in presentation of claims outside the nine month period, PEF has upheld this regulation.
Finally, we wish to assure the Federal Government of Nigeria that has given Mrs. Sharon Adefunke Kasali an opportunity to serve her fatherland and contribute to her development, the good people of Nigeria, and family members, friends and well-wishers that have been expressing outrage and shock over the investigation by the EFCC that no stone shall be left unturned in fighting this fraudulent attempt at defamation of her character.
Jiti Ogunye, Esq
Jiti Ogunye Chambers
Lagos
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