Politics

How Nigeria’s Finance Minister was forced to resign over forged certificate

Published

6 years ago

September 15, 2018

Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, on Friday resigned her appointment from President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. The journey into resignation started on Wednesday, with an order for her to resign.

Impeccable sources told PREMIUM TIMES the minister was barred from the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting and told to submit her resignation to the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari.

The verbal instruction, which was relayed to her by Mr Kyari on behalf of the president, rattled Mrs Adeosun who went home downcast from the villa.

“She has been downcast and at home since she was given the order,” a source close to her told PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday.

The option of resignation was handed the minister as a way of giving her an opportunity to salvage whatever remained of her integrity.

A leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, also reportedly advised President Buhari to ask the minister to resign.

That was, however, not done before the president left for London on vacation in July.

At least two officials who met with Mr Buhari around the time confided in PREMIUM TIMES that the president assured them that he was consulting before taking action.

“He said he spoke to about seven persons, including the Ogun State governor who brought her, to seek advise on the way out,” a chief executive of one federal agency told PREMIUM TIMES at the time.

After the communication of the presidential decision to her on Wednesday, Mrs Adeosun knew the game was up. But she soon activated an intense lobby to reverse the order hours after overcoming the initial shock.

Governors sympathetic to her cause made spirited attempts to change her fate on Wednesday, but met brick walls.

Seeing that her fate was sealed, Mrs Adeosun reluctantly called a meeting of senior finance ministry officials on Thursday.

A senior ministry official who requested that his name should not be revealed, as he was not authorised to speak on the issue, said the minister turned in her resignation letter late Friday.

At the brief meeting Thursday afternoon, Mrs Adeosun directed her staff to commence the process of tidying the books and preparing her hand-over note.
The meeting was attended by the permanent secretary and the ministry’s departmental heads.

Two senior finance ministry officials said there was directive to all the departments to immediately begin work on the hand over notes.

The official said the directive to officials to delay the formal announcement of Mrs Adeosun’s departure from the Executive Council of the Federation was given by the presidency to allow the minister sufficient time to complete her hand-over note.

After spending the entire day in her office working to clean up her table and pack her personal belongings, the minister handed over to the ministry’s permanent secretary, Mahmoud Dutse, Friday evening.

But in its statement late Friday, the presidency directed the minister of state for budget and planning, Zainab Ahmed, to oversee the finance ministry.

Mrs Adeosun graduated from the Polytechnic of East London in 1989, at the age of 22, having been born in March 1967.

Having graduated at 22, the Nigerian law made it obligatory for Mrs Adeosun to submit herself for mobilisation to participate in the one-year mandatory national service, for her to qualify for any job in Nigeria.

Following the report, the NYSC in its initial reaction disowned the purported exemption certificate the minister claimed she had.

Days later, the NYSC asked for time to investigate and carry out verification of the minister’s certificate.

The result of that verification was never made public but PREMIUM TIMES learnt it played a key role in Mrs Adeosun’s exit.

In resigning her appointment, the disgraced Minister, in her letter to Buhari, wrote as follows:

“Dear Excellency,

Let me commence by thanking you profusely for the honour and privilege of serving under your inspirational leadership. It has been a truly rewarding experience to learn from you and to observe at close quarters your integrity and sense of duty.

“I have, today, become privy to the findings of the investigation into the allegation made in an online medium that the Certificate of Exemption from National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) that I had presented was not genuine. This has come as a shock to me and I believe that in line with this administration’s focus on integrity, I must do the honourable thing and resign.

“Your Excellency, kindly permit me to outline some of the background to this matter. I was born and raised in the United Kingdom, indeed my parental family home remains in London. My visits to Nigeria up until the age of thirty-four (34) were holidays, with visas obtained in my UK passport. I obtained my first Nigerian passport at the age of thirty-four (34) and when I relocated there was debate as to whether NYSC Law applied to me. Upon enquiry as to my status relating to NYSC, I was informed that due to my residency history and having exceeded the age of thirty (30), I was exempted from the requirement to serve. Until recent events, that remained my understanding.

“On the basis of that advice and with the guidance and assistance of those, I thought were trusted associates, NYSC were approached for documentary proof of status. I then received the certificate in question. Having never worked in NYSC, visited the premises, been privy to nor familiar with their operations, I had no reason to suspect that the certificate was anything but genuine. Indeed, I presented that certificate at the 2011 Ogun State House of Assembly and in 2015 for Directorate of State Services (DSS) Clearance as well as to the National Assembly for screening. Be that as it may, as someone totally committed to a culture of probity and accountability I have decided to resign with effect from Friday, 14th September, 2018.

“Your Excellency, It has been an exceptional privilege to have served our nation under your leadership and to have played a role in steering our economy at a very challenging time. I am proud that Nigeria has brought discipline into its finances, has identified and is pursuing a path to long term sustainable growth that will unlock the potential in this great economy. Under your leadership, Nigeria was able to exit recession and has now started to lay the foundations for lasting growth and wealth creation. Repositioning this huge economy is not a short term task and there are no short cuts, indeed there are tough decisions still to be made but I have no doubt that your focus on infrastructural investment, revenue mobilisation and value for money in public expenditure will deliver growth, wealth and opportunity for all Nigerians.

“I thank His Excellency, the Vice President and my colleagues in the Federal Executive Council for the huge pleasure and honour of working with them. I also thank most specially, the team in the ‘Finance Family’ of advisers and heads of agencies under the Ministry of Finance. Your Excellency, this group of committed Nigerians represent a range of backgrounds, ethnicities and ages. They have worked well above and beyond the call of duty to support me in the tasks assigned. The diversity in my team and their ability to work cohesively to deliver reforms, convinces me that Nigeria has the human capital required to succeed.

“Your Excellency, let me conclude by commending your patience and support, during the long search for the truth in this matter. I thank you again for giving me the honour of serving under your leadership, it is a rare privilege, which I do not take for granted. As a Nigerian and committed progressive, I appreciate you for your dogged commitment to improving this nation.

Please be assured, as always, of my highest regards and best wishes.”

Kemi Adeosun (Mrs)

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Politics

Ugandan opposition politician abducted, wife says

Published

1 day ago

November 20, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

According to his wife on Wednesday, a well-known opposition leader from Uganda, Kizza Besigye was abducted during a book launch in Kenya over the weekend, taken to Uganda, and detained at a military prison in Kampala.

Despite his rejection of the results, Besigye has run against Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni four times and lost each time, claiming voting intimidation and fraud. He has been arrested several times in the past.

“I request the (government) of Uganda to release my husband Dr Kizza Besigye from where he is being held immediately,” said his wife Winnie Byanyima.

It was not immediately possible to get in touch with a Ugandan military spokesperson for comment.

“As police we don’t have him, so we can’t make any comment,” Ugandan police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke told Reuters.
A spokesperson for Kenya’s national police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party, one of Uganda’s major opposition parties, had 36 members arrested by Kenyan police in July. They were then deported to Uganda and accused of terrorism-related charges.

On the social networking site X, Byanyima stated that Besigye, who served as Museveni’s doctor during the guerrilla war but later turned into a vocal opponent, was abducted on Saturday as senior Kenyan opposition leader Martha Karua was launching a book.

“I am now reliably informed that he is in a military jail in Kampala,” said Byanyima, who is the executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. “We his family and his lawyers demand to see him. He is not a soldier. Why is he being held in a military jail?”

Museveni’s administration has been charged with repeatedly violating the human rights of opposition leaders and followers, including extrajudicial executions, torture, and unlawful detentions.

Politics

Sudan army chief Burhan meets US envoy

Published

2 days ago

November 20, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The United States special envoy to Sudan has made his first trip to the African nation, hoping to bring an end to a horrific war and boost relief to millions of people in need.

After being appointed Washington’s ambassador to Sudan in February, Tom Perriello visited Port Sudan, the army-led government’s de facto capital on the Red Sea coast.

For the first time since the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in April 2023 due to the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a top U.S. official visited the nation.

“We feel an enormous amount of urgency to end this crisis and to ensure that we can … help to get food and medicine and life-saving support to the 20 million people plus that are in need,” a State Department official said before the trip.

Over 25 million people, or half of Sudan’s population, require help, according to the U.N., as hunger has spread to one area and over 11 million people have abandoned their homes.

Sudan’s sovereign council stated in a statement that Perriello spoke with tribal, government, and humanitarian figures in addition to Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s army head.

During what the council described as a “lengthy, comprehensive, and frank” discussion, the two men talked about how to provide humanitarian help and how to end the war through a political process.

“The U.S. envoy presented several suggestions which the head of the sovereign council agreed to,” the statement said.

Although the army declined to join U.S.-mediated peace negotiations in Geneva earlier this year, the meetings did obtain commitments from the warring parties to increase access to aid.

A power battle between the army and the RSF preceded a planned shift to civilian government, which is why the conflict broke out more than a year ago.

Perriello discussed “the need to cease fighting, enable unhindered humanitarian access, including through localized pauses in the fighting to allow for the delivery of emergency relief supplies, and commit to a civilian government,” a State Department statement said.

“Right now, I think there’s a key opportunity to build on the expansion of humanitarian aid,” the State Department official stated, emphasising the need for relief corridors to the most battle-ravaged areas, such as al-Fashir, Sennar, and parts of the capital Khartoum, even though the U.S. would continue to pursue a more comprehensive ceasefire and negotiations.

Last Monday, Sudan’s sovereign council announced that it would prolong the temporary opening of the Adre border crossing with Chad. According to relief organisations, this crossing is essential for delivering food and other supplies to famine-prone portions of the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

An RSF official stated at a press conference in Nairobi that while they were still amenable to peace, they had doubts about the army’s readiness.

“They do not listen to any language but that of the rifle, and so we will continue to talk to them in the language they understand,” said Brigadier General Omar Hamdan.