THE Nigerian government has embargoed its officials and their spouses from accepting trainings and conferences, and other such fora, without first obtaining clearance or background vetting by the foreign affairs ministry or the concerned diplomats in the country where such events are to take place.
According to sharpedgenews.com findings, the directive said to have been issued by the presidency in the wake of a fraudulent invite given to the wife of Vice President Namadi Sambo, Hajiya Amina Sambo and other leading women civil society leaders including top women government functionaries by an amorphous organization known as Pan African Women Network.
Recently, the parent company of sharpedgenews.com, Reuben and Associates of Kansas had attempted launching its non-for-profit organization, Peace Compassion Group, aimed at providing care and rehabilitation for the blind and other incapacitated persons, to reduce their vulnerability by lifting them off the streets. Highly placed officials in Nigeria, who had been invited for the event had suddenly backed out. It was on this basis that Sharpedgenews.com decided to launch an investigation into what went wrong.
Nigerian government officials slated for the Peace Compassion Group program, which would have also taken them to the Alpha Pointe Association for the Blind, based in the town of Prospect, Kansas City, in US State of Missouri, believed the vision but they were told to be patient as another organization which had allegedly extended an invitation was still under investigation for extending a fraudulent invite to Nigeria’s Second Lady Amina Sambo, to an event where there was no justifiable benefit to the country.
Alpha Pointe, a reputable organization, has a vocational rehabilitation center and plastics engineering-based factory run by about 100 blind men and women producing gel-pens, etc with an annual turn-over of about 32 million dollars. A similar model was to be replicated in Nigeria.
According to Foreign Affairs Ministry sources, when Mrs. Sambo arrived the purported venue of the Pan African Women Network event in the US, there were only two people waiting to receive her in a virtually empty events hall, apart from Mrs. Carol Olubufunmi, a long-time resident of Washington, D.C. who was seen waiting alongside her daughter.
“The Mission was disappointed and saw that his was a scam,” said an Embassy source who also told sharpedgenews.com that an alternative befitting reception was later put together to honor the visiting dignitaries, with Nigerian women and the spouses of other African diplomats to the United States in attendance.
However, Mrs. Olubufunmi would not let up with her desire to manipulate state protocol to her advantage, as she pressed on to have the Mrs. Sambo, the visiting Vice-President’s wife, accompany her to visit an unnamed Congresswoman at the US Capitol. When Mrs. Olubufunmi could not answer important questions on the identity of the congresswoman and what the meeting was about, Mrs. Sambo’s handlers denied her request, adding that it was improper for a visiting VIP guest from Nigeria to go out of her way to meet an unnamed US congresswoman when it should have been the other way round.
“The fiasco was a potential threat to the personal safety of Nigeria’s Second Lady because disorderly prospective organizers bye-passed protocol and got audience at Aso Rock, the presidential offices in Abuja, where they sold their ideas directly to powerful contacts within,” an influential diplomat revealed to us earlier this week.
Since the scandalous invitation to Mrs. Sambo was thwarted and eventually exposed by the Embassy in Washington DC, Mrs. Olubufunmi has gone to town claiming that not only did Nigerian Embassy officials hijack her event to honor Second Lady Amina Sambo, but that the Embassy refused to pay her for the expenses incurred for organizing the event.
Mrs. Olubufunmi had allegedly charged and paid participation fees of over one thousand dollars by many of the delegates from Nigeria. Her claims have also been bought by some equally dubious on-line, so-called, news outlets. One of them, run by a lawyer based in Europe, actually went as far as smearing the Ambassador, alleging that the latter is a fraud.
Sharpedgenews.com investigations also revealed that Mrs. Olubufunmi had approached leading citizen journalism outfit, Sahara Reporters, with the same allegations. But upon thorough investigation, Sahara Reporters, a credible outlet on matters of integrity, exposure of fraud and corruption in government, found out that her story did not add up. As a matter fact Mr. Omoyele Sowore, the publisher of Sahara Reporters.com had written Ambassador Adefuye to demand the truth about the serious allegations.
Having been exposed as a fraud, Mrs. Olubufunmi recently found criminal soul-mates in certain individuals who said they have been assured by President Goodluck Jonathan that Ambassador Adefuye would soon be removed from office. Adefuye’s crime, according to Olubufunmi and her dubious associates is that the ambassador was giving bad publicity and odious reputation to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Embassy sources told sharpedgenews.com that the bad press that Olubufunmi and company are referring to is actually emerging from the same set of people who “concoct the entire drama in their own minds to manipulate Nigerians and the international community after being exposed as fraudsters.