(Special Report) How banks’ joined forces to kick out Obono-Obla from SPIP
Fresh fact has emerged on why former chairman of the Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP), Okoi Obono-Obla, was sacked.
Though earlier reports presented issues of persecution by an aide of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo for his refusal to be disloyal to President Muhammadu Buhari, latest facts uncovered by Business Hilights Intelligence Unit (BHIU), pointed to the direction of pressure from banks’ who received humongous bailouts (tax payers’ money) from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2006 which was surreptitiously written off within the period.
Mr Obono-Obla headed the special panel on the recovery of government property before the panel was dissolved by Mr Buhari in August over an allegation of corruption.
Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari had in a letter dated Wednesday, August 14, 2019 and signed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, suspended Mr. Obono-Obla, “with immediate effect”.
The letter reads as follows: “I write to convey the directive of His Excellency, Muhammadu Buhari, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, for your suspension from office as Chairman, Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property with immediate effect.
“This suspension shall subsist until the conclusion of the ICPC investigations into cases of alleged falsification of records and financial impropriety against your person.
“You are required by this instruction to strictly observe and comply with the provisions of PSR 030405 (a-c) of the Public Service Rules. For the avoidance of doubt, the Solicitor General of the Federation and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Justice, shall be the authority to whom you shall report.
“Please accept my best regards”.
However, in a document stumbled upon by BHIU weekend, Obono-Obla claimed as follows; “We investigated the Petroleum Equalization Fund, PEF, and the 7bn dollars bailout fund that the Obasanjo administration granted commercial banks in the country.
“You remember that in 2006, when Charles Soludo was governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), a bailout fund of $7bn was given out to commercial banks for recapitalization.
“This was not money dashed to the banks, the banks were loaned these funds and they were supposed to return this money to the Federal Government, but as I speak, going into 2020, this particular money has not been returned.
“In the course of our investigations into why this money was not returned, I wrote to the Central Bank about this money and in their reply, the CBN said the Board of CBN met sometime in 2006 and wrote off the money.
“It was absurd to hear this and we went into asking in our investigations, how come money belonging to you and I, the ordinary Nigerians, was taken and handed over to a few well-placed persons, who traded with the money, through their privately owned commercial banks and then got their cronies to sit in whatever board and wrote off this bailout. Isn’t this amazing? Obono-Obla queried.
Observers of the activities of the SPIP can recall that less than few days after raising issues of the banks’ bailout, his ordeals soared leading to his eventual removal and even disbandment of the panel.
Besides, from the time he raised the issue till date, neither the Bankers’ Committee nor the leadership of the CBN had found it pertinent to brief Nigerians on the true status of the over $7bn.
However, aside the federal allegations of corruption on the Cross River State-born lawyer, another angle to his sack were allegations of certificate forgery.
