The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to rethink his nomination of Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, the former Ogun State Commissioner of Finance, as a minister in his government.
CACOL, in a petition signed by its head, Debo Adeniran, said Mrs. Adeosun was currently enveloped in various controversies including financial impropriety as commissioner, as well as citizenship status.
Full text of petition obtained by Huhuonline.com is reproduced below:
His Excellency
President Muhammadu Buhari
President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces
Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Aso Rock Villa,
Abuja – Nigeria.
Your Excellency,
KEMI ADEOSUN’S MINISTERIAL NOMINATION; CACOL DISCOVERS ANOTHER MISFIT
Running through the list of your nominees as ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as being forwarded to the National Assembly for screening and confirmation, we and other concerned Nigerians, can not and must not pretend to be comfortable with some names prominent among which is that of Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, the former Finance Commissioner in Ogun State of Nigeria, hence this petition.
Whilst conceding to you, as constitutionally empowered, the power to appoint, even without consulting with anyone, we in CACOL, consider it a patriotic responsibility on our part to bring to your notice, facts and information at our disposal that are considered useful and helpful to your administration; all in the overall interest of Nigeria and Nigerians. This petition, we want to make clear, is not aimed at pulling anybody down or settling scores other than to ensure the right pegs are in the right holes; a sermon you have consistently, since assuming office, been preaching.
Do permit us to remind you that CACOL had, right from time, been in the vanguard of advocating thoroughness and sincerity in the exercise of selecting those who were to man top positions in your government as Nigerians are yearning for a sharp departure from the ugly past whereby appointments were made strictly as a means of settling loyalists of the ruling party while competence and integrity were relegated to the background. You will also remember, your excellency, how we have remained consistently vocal in demanding that some of your favoured partymen who had previously served in high public offices but were having allegations of one corrupt act or the other hanging on their neck, be thoroughly investigated and cleared before being considered for higher responsibilities in your government, or prosecuted if found culpable. The former governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Fashola is one of such cases in question. This is why we would be imploring you to see and treat this piece as just one way of contributing our quota to the process of that positive change in our life as a nation and to further strengthen the degree of impressive credibility and confidence your young administration is presently enjoying from across the country.
Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, we dare say, is one individual that cannot add any value or gain to your administration which you have consistently been promising would be focused, proactive, selfless and above all, corrupt-free, given her antecedent that has been found to be filled with so many scandalous activities premising on financial mismanagement, questionable and self-beneficial transactions of government businesses, wastefulness, acquisition of questionable wealth, ineptness and of course, graft. Report even has it that Mrs. Kemi Adeosun has been parading a dual citizenship (British/Nigerian); a status that constitutionally disqualifies her from holding such office.
Your Excellency, as you can see from the attached, our office has been inundated with petitions from various quarters, apparently out of patriotic zeal and inclination for a positive change in our national life and polity, as consistently being canvassed by you and your party, the APC and certainly NOT out of personal grudge or bitterness.
ALLEGATIONS LEVELED AGAINST MRS. KEMI ADEOSUN
CACOL is in possession of documents which chronicles allegations of financial impropriety leveled against her by Organization of Financial Probity.
The Group had in a statement issued last week accused the former commissioner of dual citizenship, fraud, awarding contracts to her husband, manipulation of government records, and living above her income.
Mrs Kemi Adeosun, the Ogun State Finance Commissioner for four years during the first term of Governor Ibikunle Amosun said that there was no truth in the allegations and dared the group to provide evidence of their claims made in their statement.
Organization of Financial Probity had in a press release titled ‘Ten Things People Need to Know About Mrs Kemi Adeosun, Former Commissioner for Finance, Ogun State alleged that Mrs Kemi Adeosun’s four-year stint in Ogun State left behind a trail of financial mismanagement, immeasurable ineptness and unspoken avarice. Mrs Kemi Adeosun failed in her primary duty to guide Governor Ibikunle Amosun in prudent financial management.
Among the claims of the group include that;
1. A British citizen, Adeosun returned to Nigeria in the early 2000s, having worked at a local branch of a UK building society, but determined to break into the Nigerian financial sector by any means possible.
2. One of the first positions she obtained in Nigeria was in Bolaji Balogun’s ChapelHill Denham where she was asked to resign, following anti-company activities which she executed in conjunction with Niyi Adeosun, her husband – a heavy drinker who has made a career of capitalising on dubious opportunities created by his wife. We would like Kemi Adeosun to let the general public know about the role both she and her husband played in the failed Ogun State Model Schools project which resulted in a huge waste of public funds. Her husband’s company collected an advance payment for building some of the schools yet the structures did not materialise.
3.Although their relationship has since gone awry, it is widely known that it was Mr Wale Edun, former Lagos commissioner for Finance (under Tinubu) who generously recommended Kemi Adeosun to Governor Amosun. Due diligence was clearly not done or else it would have been apparent to Ibikunle Amosun that he was appointing someone who is commonly referred to as a ‘rogue’ in the Nigerian financial sector.
4.On getting the job as Commissioner for Finance in Ogun State, Kemi Adeosun constantly misled both the State Executive Council and the governor by over-inflating the state’s IGR. This led to the Ogun State government being further plunged into debt. It would be instructive to learn just how much debt Ogun State has accrued in the last four years under the watch of Governor Ibikunle Amosun and his Finance Commissioner. We challenge Mrs Kemi Adeosun to provide an analysis of the recurrent income that supports her IGR claims. Does Kemi Adeosun not know that the huge debts owed to hundreds of contractors should form part of the state’s current liabilities? Ogun State’s finances are in a mess.
5 During her tenure, Kemi Adeosun routinely rejected good opportunities for investor funding of projects, in preference for loans to the state so that she could benefit from kickbacks from banks such as GTBank and First Bank. So devious is she that when given preloaded bankcards, she would specifically demand that the money be handed to her in cash.
6. Kemi Adeosun misled the State Executive Council in divesting from or underfunding potentially lucrative but failing parastatals like Gateway Savings and Loans, Plantgate etc thereby creating business opportunities for companies to which her husband is linked.
7. Kemi Adeosun used her inside knowledge of projects in other ministries to hijack initiatives that the ministries were promoting. A case in point is the flagship programme, Home Owners Charter, which ended up being driven by the Ministry of Finance instead of the Ministry of Housing. Such projects provided the opportunity for profiteering. Based on our research, Mrs Kemi Adeosun managed the statewide supply of the bright green Home Owners Charter porter cabins at six times the going rate.
8. A particularly juicy project was the implementation of the cashless policy. It affected almost all major ministries yet was done without consultation or collaboration, leaving Kemi Adeosun as the controller-in-chief of the ‘thank-you’ packages from the banks who paid her a percentage on a recurrent basis.
9.In the words of a member of staff at the Ministry of Finance, “When Mrs Adeosun can not find a way of personally benefitting from an initiative introduced by any of her colleagues, she is known to kill it with lies, thereby abusing her access to the governor. She would then repackage the same ideas in a way that would benefit her directly, more often than not using the Ministry of Finance or her external surrogates.” The details of such transactions will be made public in due course.
10 It is important for Nigerians everywhere to know that if Kemi Adeosun is appointed to any Federal MDAs, she will without a doubt undermine President Buhari’s intentions by damaging such an institution with her greed and inclination for corrupt practices. Without resorting to bamboozling people with her cockney accent, we challenge Mrs Kemi Adeosun, who is not an indigene of Ogun State to provide the general public with references from the financial institutions she has worked for.
With due respect, we recall you once described ministers as noise-makers which we agree, most of them truly are, but be that as it may, the consequences of their services on the overall success or otherwise of any administration, cannot be over-emphasized.
It is against this background, therefore, that we now urge your office to diligently peruse and investigate every of the weighty allegations, as contained in the attached documents, leveled against the nominee, with a view to establishing its credibility and authenticity, and of course, its potential implications on the esteem profile of your administration.
While assuring your Excellency of our unalloyed loyalty to the democratic sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and your administration’s seemingly unshaken resolve to confront headlong corruption and clean up the polity of every sort of sleaze and rot, we shall not tire out from lending our support in every legitimate way possible, to ensure a resounding success in the quest.
Yours faithfully,
Debo Adeniran
Executive Chairman, CACOL