Corruption: Remove Fayemi From Your Cabinet, ECGC Group Tells Buhari

Agency ReporterMarch 20, 2018

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The Ekiti Citizenship and Governance Centre, ECGC, has called on President Mohammadu Buhari to remove the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Kayode Fayemi, from his cabinet and immediately institute a probe panel to investigate his past activities in government.

Rising from an emergency executive meeting held in Ibadan, Oyo State capital at the weekend, the group among others, said Fayemi by his past and recent conducts have become a major source of embarrassment to the Mohammadu Buhari government.

“We are simply appalled by the level of arrogance, flagrant disobedience of democratic tenets and worse still sleaze, conflict of interest, abuse of office and sheer reckless conducts by Fayemi”, the group’s Publicity Secretary, Abayomi Ogundele, said.

ECGC advised that it was high time the All Progressives Party, APC government began to live up to its promise to deliver a government that would be critical to social vices and particularly corruption.

The House of Representatives had during the week passed a vote of no confidence on the minister and further ruled that “it no longer has any business with him and does not regard him as an Honourable Minister”.

The declaration was a sequel to an ongoing probe into the concession of the Ajaokuta Steel Complex and sundry other fraud-related allegations and indictments trailing Fayemis tenure as the executive governor of Ekiti State.

The House mandated its ad-hoc committee on Ajaokuta Steel Complex to consider the possibility of a Bill for an Act to provide for the completion of the Ajaokuta Steel Company and prohibit its concession before the completion.

The lawmakers took these decisions after resolving to probe the engagement of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) by the minister to audit the steel complex towards its concession.

The decisions arose from a motion by Ahmed Yarima (Bauchi-APC) and 24 others.

Moving the motion, Mr. Yarima said the firm engaged to audit the steel company, PwC, is globally discredited, having been sanctioned in many countries, including India which banned it for two years for infractions of over $1 billion.

He said the firm was also sanctioned in Brazil and paid $50 million as fine, as well as being fined £5.1 million in the United Kingdom in the largest ever sanction imposed by the UK regulator.

“They paid $225 million and $25 million respectively as fines to TYCO shareholders in the U.S and Bank of Tokyo – Mitsubishi, where it was implicated for money laundering for Iran, Sudan, and Myanmar, blacklisted for roles in terrorism and human rights abuses; among other infractions and irregularities in their operations, which has left its reputation in tatters,” he said.

Linking the recent development to allegations of mismanagement of N25billion bond secured as governor of Ekiti State by Fayemi, ECGC wondered why the Federal Government has kept sealed lips over Fayemi numerous atrocities even as a white paper was issued banning him from politics for ten years after the Ekiti saga.

Ogundele said: It is instructive to mention here that the company with close ties to Fayemi’s wife which is enmeshed in the Ajaokuta scandal is the same company that brokered the 25billion bond fraud Fayemi inflicted on Ekiti state when he was governor and for which he has also refused to make any explanation of how the fund grew wings and disappeared”

Among others, the group said Fayemi has failed to account for the following transactions that happened when he was governor of Ekiti state and even some recently as minister:

How did Fayemi spend the 25 billion bond?

Where is the N2.7 billion earmarked for the construction of Ado Ekiti Market?

The N6 billion alleged to have been spent on the procurement of Samsung laptop computers for Ekiti State teachers.

Where are the high-end cars delivered to the so-called Ekiti Liason Office in Ibadan which we have found out to be Fayemi’s house in Ibadan and later taken to his house in Ghana where they were packed.? Mrs. Fayemi subsequently brought back one of the cars, a Range Rover for her personal use in Nigeria.

Cars took to Ghana, all supplied by Coscharis:

2 Range Rovers
2 Mercedes Benz
2 BMW
10 Hilux Pick Up Vans

Who got the contract for the N2b Ado beautification program that was not done. We learned it was the wife of the same political godfather mentioned by the House of Representatives?

Who got the N5b contract for the Ado Ekiti Federal Secretariat he went inspecting during the last Christmas holidays? We learned he and his political godfather mentioned by the House of Representatives.
Who got the N600m contract for the furnishing of the Oke Ayoba government house? We know but we are calling him to come clean failing we shall tell the world.
Who got the contract for the renovation of Ikogosi Warm Spring. Where is the fund is for the abandoned Civic Centre which was fully provided for in the N25 billion bon?
What did Fayemi do with the N6 billion loan from Ecobank that he used Fountain Holdings Equity to collect?

“We are now at a point where silence is no longer golden, the Buhari administration needs to act on Fayemi’s unending scandals. Buhari must act expunge the reputational burden called Fayemi. Fayemi should be made to face the law to account for his past and current misdeeds” Ogundele stressed.