THE administration in Nigeria, lately jittery and desperate over the burning ambition of its principal, President Goodluck Jonathan to return to office at all cost in 2015 for a highly polarizing second term, has continued its zero tolerance criticisms, whether constructive or mischievous.
Using its mantra of anti-corruption crusade, it engaged the service of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, to arrest and harass a journalist, Mr. Tom Chiahemen on Thursday.
Mr. Tom Chiahemen, a moderate, easy going reporter of middle-belt extraction was arrested and kept incommunicado for having run a media consulting company that accepted advertisements from Professor Obiageli Ezekwesili as education minister.
A consuming passion to dig-up mud to smear the former minister who recently called for probity and openness in the handing of government business in Nigeria because there is no immediate reason for the arrest of anyone who had did business with as a minister.
The handling of a 30 million naira media campaign meant for about ten different outfits is what the ICPC now views as fraud. Its investigators believed that the copy of the original quotes submitted by the company owned by Tom Chiahemen submitted for award of advert campaign in 2006 and 2007 was too clean and may have been recently produced in order to conceal the non-transparent nature of the award.
But Chiahemen has explained to them that by his profession as a news reporter, he was supposed to be meticulous, and as such, he had neatly kept the award letter and proposal and quotes for the jobs.
The investigators also challenged the probability of running a private consulting firm while in the employment of a national newspaper company. He also calmly told them that the company for which he worked should have been allowed to say if such ownership amounted to conflict of interest, but that a free marked economy would suffer a serious shrink and crisis if entrepreneurs are told when to start or stop business by governments.
Chiahemen told the ICPC investigators that they were over-reaching in asking questions that scare people from owning businesses.
Sharpedgenews.com was told that the publisher was allowed to be bailed after being grilled for ten hours.
The whole thing continues to drift in the direction of intimidating journalists, politicians and civil society advocates to cow into silence.
“Agents of the state stop at nothing now, including making legitimate businesses to look like fraud,” said a source that is familiar with festering totalitarian tactics of the leadership of Nigeria.
It still looks real that many other legitimate business owners and academics who had any direct dealings with the former minister would continue to be invited until they find enough evidence with which to nail her.
Reproduced below is what Mr. Chiahemen said of his ordeal with desperate government agents out to nail perceived detractors by hook or by crook:
“Following several telephone calls I received from colleagues, friends and family members, including visits to my office and home, I wish to confirm that I was invited, arrested and detained for over seven (7) hours by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) at its headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday. I was also asked to report back at 10 am today (Thursday) and was kept for over three (3) hours before a lawyer-friend arrived to sign my bail forms.
“From 10.00am when I arrived to honour the Commission’s Headquarters on Wednesday to honour their written invitation, I was not allowed to leave the ICPC until 5:12pm.
“In summary, I would say that I was questioned over the Advertisements placed in several Nigerian Newspapers by the Federal Ministry of Education during the tenure of Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili, between August 2006 and May 2007.
“The ICPC had, in a letter dated March 4, 2013 (with reference No. ICPC/CH/FIU.2/126 and addressed to me, said it was investigating “allegations that bothered on the violation of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000.” It added that pursuant to Section 28 of the said Act, I was required to appear before the undersigned (Adedayo A. Kayode, Head, Financial Investigation Unit) on Wednesday, 6th March 2013 at the ICPC Headquarters, Abuja by 10.00 hours.”
“I arrived the ICPC Headquarters a few minutes to 10.00am and spent a few minutes at the reception carrying out all the procedures including surrendering of my telephone handset, before I was shown to the office of Mr. A. A. Kayode.
“I was handed over to one female official of the Unit who took me into a tiny room with a big table surrounded by about four chairs. There was no television or radio set in the room to watch or listen to.
“Without any preamble, she asked me to say all I knew and/or did with the Federal Ministry of Education between 2006 and 2007 while I was a staff of Daily Independent Newspaper.
“I explained to her that a company in which I owned majority shares, Cattigan Communications Limited, was appointed in August 2006 by the Federal Ministry of Education to handle media buying and placements (of advertisements) for the Ministry. In that capacity, I explained to the ICPC official, Cattigan Communications Ltd was expected to handle the placement/payment of all public notices, announcements and other publicity/promotions materials from the Ministry for public/broadcast in the approved national dailies and electronic stations.
“I went further to recall that in the print media, which Cattigan Communications Ltd handled mostly, various advertisements running into almost N30million were placed and paid for by the Federal Ministry of Education.
“I explained to the lady the circumstances that led to the appointment of Cattigan Communications Ltd to handle media buying/placements during the Education Sector Reform Programme of the Ezekwesili/Obasanjo administration. I told her that the Company was nominated and presented to the Ministry by Correspondents of the various national media organizations covering Education Sector, under the umbrella organization, Education Correspondents Association of Nigeria (ECAN).
“After listening to my explanations, she said she believed my story because it tallied with the findings by the ICPC investigators. She told me they had been to the Daily Independent, my former place of work and all that. She however asked if I had any documentary evidence to prove that my company was appointed by the Ministry to handle the job and whether there were any receipts to back up payments that were made to Cattigan Communications Ltd. I told her if I
searched my house, I could still locate the letter appointing Cattigan Communications Ltd and other receipts/acknowledgements of the payments. I was then given 10 minutes to produce the above documents from my house, which is not far away from ICPC headquarters.
“To my utter surprise, when I presented the original copy of the said letter dated August 24, 2006 and other documents, the ICPC officials changed their posture. First, they excused me from the Interrogation Room for about 10 minutes, during which the lady and 3 others went over my documents and discussed inaudibly among themselves.“When I was invited back into the Interrogation Room, I was handed an entirely different form which indicated that I was under arrest and that the statement I was going to make from thence would be used against me. I sought to know if I could call in my lawyer to guide and bail me, but they chorused: “no,” that they don’t allow lawyers to bail people. Then I asked them to explain why I
was under arrest.
“To my bemusement, the lady said I lied because the letter dated August 24, 2006 appointing Cattigan Communications Limited to handle advert placements for the Ministry was looking newer and neater than the letter sent to me only three days ago (March 4, 2013) by the ICPC. They all argued and insisted that there was no way a letter issued in 2006 could look so new. I only swore and stood by my word that the letter was indeed given to me by the Ministry in 2006
and that I was touching or bringing it out from the file for the first time as there had been no need to touch it before now.
“Their second complaint was that I wrote two different letters to the Minister of Education on the same day (January 23, 2007) claiming two different sums of money (N33,395,734.20 and N19,501,327.95). My explanation was that the second letter was only a follow-up on the first letter to adjust the number of pages that were to be placed in newspapers with the available funds, in cheque form. I told the ICPC officials that the first letter had proposed a total of 125 pages of Adverts to be placed in 12 different national dailies (The Punch, Daily Independent, Daily Champion, Thisday, Daily Sun, The Guardian, The Nation, Leadership, Daily Trust, New Age and New Nigerian) at the cost of N32,348,195.13 plus VAT of N1,047,539.07), totaling N33,
395,734.20.
The second letter, also dated 23/1/2007 was written in response to the need to reduce the number of pages of Adverts and the number of Newspapers to publish the Adverts within the sum ofN20million that was readily available to the Task Team to use for the payment of
Adverts at the time. This second letter was asking the Minister for the
release of the sum of N19,501,327.95 (as against the earlier letter that was requesting for N33,395,734.20). This followed the dropping of two newspapers: Daily Independent and Leadership from the list of papers earlier proposed.
“The ICPC officials further questioned the propriety of me working with Daily Independent and at the same time running Cattigan Communications Ltd which, according to them, was performing similar functions as my employer, Daily Independent. I tried unsuccessfully to educate them that Cattigan Communications was only a consulting firm and that I wasn’t running it full-time; nor was the Company competing with Daily Independent.
“The issue of Receipts and Invoices used in the transaction also came up. The ICPC wanted me to show evidence that the N28.2million that the Federal Ministry of Education paid to Cattigan
Communications was paid to the various Newspapers listed and if so, where are the Receipts (not the Invoices attached) from those papers?
“They again wanted me to prove that the Newspapers said to have been paid the various sums of money actually published the Adverts for the Ministry and if so, where are the copies of the papers as evidence?
“I told the ICPC officials that I had collected both the tearsheets (pages of Newspapers showing the Adverts) and Receipts from the various Newspapers and handed them over to the Ministry’s Task Team led, then by Dr. Okey Ikechukwu.
“One of the ICPC officials did ask me how much of the money went to Dr. Okey Ikechukwu and I said as far as the Adverts placed in the print media were concerned, each of the Correspondents was required to forfeit one per cent (1%) of their commission to Cattigan Communications to settle the bank’s COT, while each Correspondent who was a member of ECAN, contributed 5% of their commission to the Treasurer of the Association.
“The ICPC officials were of the view that Cattigan Communications could be one of the Companies used as a conduit pipe for siphoning government funds and they told me pointedly that it was possible the whole Advert jamboree during the tenure of Dr. Ezekwesili as Education Minister could be a hoax.
“Otherwise, they insisted, I must tell/show the ICPC what each of the Adverts was about (the content), and where the Adverts were published. This is something that took place as far back as between September 2006 and May 2007.
By the time I was released to go home on Wednesday, it was 5.12pm and I was asked to report back on Thursday for continuation of the interrogation.
“When I reported at the ICPC headquarters today, I was handed sets of the documents that had been collected from me on Wednesday and photocopied. I was asked for write “certified true copy, my full names, designation, Cattigan Communications Ltd, my signature and date.”
“After the exercise, which took almost 30 minutes to complete, I was told to go to the gate of the ICPC and make phone calls and bring somebody to come and bail me. I went to where I had earlier surrendered my handset, made several phone calls, first to the Chairman of the Abuja council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), friends, colleagues and family members. I went back to the financial investigation unit and waited for about one hour before a friend (names withheld) arrived and was handed my bail forms to complete and sign. He was told to be ready to produce me any time the ICPC needed me.
“As I was signing a section in the form meant for me, I noticed that the offence against me was: violation of the corrupt practices and other related offences Act 2000.”
Obviously, this arrest is as a result of recent allegation made by Dr Oby Ezekwesili that Jonathan’s administration has siphoned $67 billion Foreign Exchange Reserve left by Late President Musa Yar’Adua and President Olusegun Obasanjo, an allegation that the presidency has described as “deliberate dissemination of falsehood, unsubstantiated and malicious claims.”