Babachir Lawal, a former secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), says he was framed in an alleged corruption scandal.
Lawal spoke on Thursday during an interview with Channels Television.
In December 2016, a senate ad hoc committee on “mounting humanitarian crisis in the north-east” indicted the former SGF of fraud in a contract awarded for the clearing of “invasive plant species” in Yobe state, through the presidential initiative on north-east (PINE).
PINE, which was under Lawal, was at the time unable to account for N2.5 billion allocated for poverty alleviation for IDPs.
The senate ad hoc committee accused the former SGF of using N544 million to cut grasses.
Subsequently, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arraigned Lawal and others over alleged fraud.
In October 2017, Lawal was sacked by President Muhammadu Buhari, and according to the presidency, the decision was in line with the recommendation of the probe panel.
Asked during the interview on Thursday if he felt the allegation affected his public image, Lawal said the scandal has “enlarged” his profile.
“On the contrary, it has enlarged my profile. The thing is in court and I have pleaded not guilty and I believe I’m not guilty. A lot of Nigerians, everywhere I go, know it was a set-up. It was very clear,” he said.
“I know some people set me up. I won’t tell you. I know and they know that I know some of them have confessed.”
Asked if it is right for someone who is in government to influence a contract to a company in which he is a beneficiary, the former SGF said he had resigned from the company before his appointment into public office.
“I was a member of the board for 16 companies at that time (2015). I was managing director for one. I wrote letters of resignation to those companies,” he said.
“I instructed my lawyers to disengage me from the Corporate Affairs Commission, documented, written and even the fee paid for.
“We had the board resolution sent to the banks delisting me as a signatory to all the accounts.
“All these are documented for everyone to see. In politics, nobody was interested in all these things.
“What happened, therefore, was that the company of which I was a managing director, unknown to me, got a contract as consultant to supervise a project which was called grass cutting. It wasn’t grass cutting.”
TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria Plc has projected to achieve N72.246 billion in revenue for the third-quarter ending September 2022.
In its forecast of the statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income obtained from the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX), the oil firm also projected N58.530 billion as cost of sales for the period.
Challenges of insecurity and other high costs of operations attributable to poor infrastructure have also continued to make the business operating environment difficult – especially in the oil and gas sector of the economy.
Total is also targeting to rake in N3.713 billion as profit before tax and N2.510 billion for profit after tax during the period.
Total Energies Marketing Nigeria recently announced its first quarter (Q1) 2022 unaudited results for the period ended March 31, 2022, with revenue recording 46.3% to N97.61 billion from N66.70 billion reported in Q1 2021.
The growth in revenue reported by Total Energies Marketing Nigeria was driven by higher product prices and demand from consumers in the period three months of 2022.
The petroleum marketing company sustained dominance in the downstream oil & gas market as the growth in revenue was driven by the impressive growth across lubricants & others which gained 91.3% in Q1 2022 and Petroleum products that rose by 34.1% in Q1 2022.
Revenue contribution from the lubricants & others line increased to 31per cent in Q1 2022 from 24% reported in Q1 2021, highest level on record and highlighting management’s strategy of maximizing its lubes revenue growth.
Across its business segments, revenue from the Network rose by 10.8% and contributed 53 per cent of revenue), General Trade rose by 125.6% and contributed 37 per cent of revenue) and Aviation rose by 168.3% and contributed 11% of revenue) segments all increased.
Net finance cost declined by 44.6% to N7.64 million from N140.08 million in Q1 2021, following a surge in finance income to N684 million from N37.05 million in Q1 2021.
On the other hand, finance costs increased by 330% to N761.65 million, driven by interests on other loans from N515.32 million reported in Q1 2022.
Overall, profit before tax surged by 50.6% to N6.55 billion in Q1 2022 as against N4.35 billion reported in Q1 2021.
Notwithstanding a higher tax expense of N2.19 billion in 2022 from N1.38 billion in Q1 2021, profit after tax grew by 47 per cent to N4.37 billion in Q1 2022 from N2.97 billion reported in Q1 2021.
Shell Plc will receive two final bids for its stake in its Nigerian joint venture this week from Tony Elumelu’s Heirs Holdings and local firm ND Western Limited, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people close to the heart of the matter.
The two are scrambling to procure Shell’s three-tenths holding in the JV located in the crude-rich Niger Delta region and offshore fields neighbouring it.
Shell will stop welcoming bids on Friday, according to the people who spoke on the condition that their identities will be concealed, given the sensitivity of the subject.
In 2021, oil and gas consultancy research house WoodMac estimated Shell’s own slice of the partnership at $2.3 billion based on a long-term oil price of $50 per barrel.
But as Brent now hovers around $121, the value of Shell’s interest is likely to be way higher.
Last year, the oil major said it was willing to divest its interest while noting that its long-term energy transition blueprint is out of tune with the operating environment in Nigeria, where oil installations and pipelines are target of vandals and where crude spills and theft are rife.
Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief, informed shareholders last month a steep surge in attacks recently has sparked off a near-chaos situation its firm could not handle.
“In the end, we have to concede that this is beyond what we can do,” Mr Beurden said.
According to two people privy to the transaction, possible future costs linked to litigation and environmental liabilities could influence the valuation of Shell’s stake.
Seplat Energy and Sahara Group, who this February launched non-binding bids for the stake are no longer in contention, the people said.
Exxon Mobil Corp is also walking that path having announced in February it planned to offload its shallow-water operations to Seplat for around $1.3 billion.
TotalEnergies is also on track to divest its 10 per cent holding in the same JV involving Shell.
The insistence of the supporters of Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike on his nomination is causing a stalemate in the search for the running mate for the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar.
Atiku won the presidential primary of the PDP on May 29 and has since been consulting with the leaders of the party on his vice presidential pick.
The party has until June 17 to submit its list of candidates for all elective offices in the 2023 general elections to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
While the supporters of Mr Wike are insisting on his nomination as Atiku’s running mate, a majority of leaders of the PDP prefer the Governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa, for the position.
Mr Okowa had supported Atiku at the primary and is from a major South-South State like Mr Wike.
The presidential candidate is said to prefer Mr Okowa but is being forced to delay his decision by the contention that Mr Wike would bring on board the ticket stronger political structure and financial muscles than Mr Okowa.
The supporters of the Rivers governor are also referencing his roles in rescuing the party at numerous times of crises and how he had also supported PDP chapters across the country in states where the party does not run the government.
However, Mr Wike’s critics say he is not “presidential in conduct” and would be a dangerous deputy and divisive figure in the presidency should the party win the presidential election.
A source close to the negotiation said Atiku has offered to appoint Mr Wike petroleum minister or give him an opportunity to nominate one should the party win the election.
However, the Rivers State governor’s camp is insisting on the vice-presidential slot, saying “a promise is not as important as what is currently on hand”.
Hours after the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) elected Bola Tinubu as its presidential candidate on Wednesday, Atiku met with the 13 governors elected on the ticket of his own party in continuation of his search for the most suitable running mate. The meeting was unable to reach a decision.
The former vice president is now scheduled to meet the Board of Trustees of the party on Thursday (today) on the same matter. A party insider said the Board of Trustees might set up a committee to resolve the deadlock.
Atiku’s running mate in the 2019 presidential election, Peter Obi, defected from the PDP just before the presidential primary in which he was an aspirant and has now been nominated as the flag bearer of the Labour Party.
Former Lagos State Governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, took a major step toward his ambition of becoming Nigeria’s President by winning the All Progressives Congress’ presidential primary at a special convention held in Eagle Square, Abuja.
He won the election by beating the likes of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, and the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan.
More than 2,300 delegates voted in the contest that produced Tinubu as the presidential flagbearer of the ruling party.
He is now scheduled to face the Peoples Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar and others in the February 25 presidential ballot.
Flurry Of Endorsements
After weeks of political drama and intrigues during which the party held several meetings and tried but failed to get a consensus candidate, things started to swing Tinubu’s way when aspirants were called to address delegates before voting began.
Former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio, was the first aspirant to step up. Rather than solicit votes for himself, he endorsed Tinubu and appealed to delegates to vote for the APC chieftain.
Senator Ibikunle Amosun and Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, followed in Akpabio’s lead.
Two other aspirants – Senator Ajayi Boroffice and Dimeji Bankole – also signalled their support for Tinubu.
Another major endorsement for Tinubu came from Jigawa State Governor, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar.
The only female in the contest, Uju Ken-Ohanenye, also endorsed the APC chieftain.
The only other endorsement from an aspirant came from Nicholas Felix to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
Although 23 aspirants were billed to participate in the primary, nine of them – including the seven aspirants who endorsed Tinubu and Felix who stepped down for Osinbajo – pulled out of the contest.
The ninth aspirant who announced his withdrawal was former Senate President Ken Nnamani who decried the failure of the party to zone its ticket to the South East.
Thereafter, 14 aspirants went into the contest as voting commenced in earnest. They include Tinubu, Osinbajo, Amaechi, Lawan, Umahi, and Rochas Okorocha.
Others are Yahaya Bello, Tein Jack-Rich, Emeka Nwajiuba, Ben Ayade, Ikeobasi Mokelu, Ogbonnaya Onu, Tunde Bakare, and Sani Yerima.
The crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress (APC) took a new turn late Monday as 12 northern state governors of the party insisted that the party should pick its presidential candidate from the southern part of Nigeria.
This occurred at about the same time the party’s national chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, announced that President Muhammadu Buhari has endorsed the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, as the consensus candidate.
The governors restated their position at a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday.
Briefing State House correspondents after the meeting, the Plateau governor, Simeon Lalong, said the governors were at the Presidential Villa to apologise to the president because they met at the weekend and took the position to support power shift to the southern part of the country in the spirit of fairness, but before they could convey their position to the president, the matter got leaked.
Also speaking, the Kebbi State Governor, Atiku Bagudu, said the stance of the northern PDP governors that power should shift to the south was for fairness.
“We looked at the totality of the issues in our country and we believe APC with a President that has delivered democratic dividends across the breadth of the country and 22 Governors, has everything going for it.
“What is the political brinkmanship that we need to bring so that every component of Nigeria will feel important. It is to allow opportunity for other parts of the country. And this is a step that will bring more peace and resonate with every part of Nigeria,” he said.
In his remarks, the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, said out of the 14 governors of APC-controlled states in Northern Nigeria, only one, that of Kogi State, who is also an aspirant, disagreed with their position of zoning the presidency to the south.
At the meeting with the president, the governors insisted on their advice that the party should nominate a candidate from among the southern aspirants in the race.
Ten of the governors and a former governor of Sokoto State, Aliyu Wammako, had issued a statement on Saturday in which they first issued their advice on the power shift.
“After careful deliberation, we wish to state our firm conviction that after eight years in office of President Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the APC for the 2023 elections should be one of our teeming members from the southern states of Nigeria. It is a question of honour for the APC, an obligation that is not in any way affected by the decisions taken by another political party. We affirm that upholding this principle is in the interest of building a stronger, more united and more progressive country.
“We, therefore, wish to strongly recommend to President Muhammadu Buhari that the search for a successor as the APC’s presidential candidate be limited to our compatriots from the southern states. We appeal to all aspirants from the northern states to withdraw in the national interest and allow only the aspirants from the south to proceed to the primaries. We are delighted by the decision of our esteemed colleague, His Excellency, Governor Abubakar Badaru to contribute to this patriotic quest by withdrawing his presidential aspiration,” they had said in the statement.
On Monday, an aide to the Kwara State governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, issued a statement to affirm his support for his 10 colleagues.
Some newspapers had on Saturday reported that Buhari had accepted the advice of the governors and stated this when he met the 23 presidential aspirants at the Aso Rock Villa Saturday evening.
However, a presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, issued a statement the following day to say that the president did not endorse the call for a southern candidate.
The president has since met with different stakeholders in the party and urged them to prevail on the aspirants to come to a consensus to produce a candidate before the convention for which preparations are now underway in Abuja.
The APC National Chairman, Mr Adamu, told a meeting of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party that the president had picked Mr Lawan, a Yobe senator, as his preferred candidate.
A member of the NWC, who was at the meeting but asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said although the matter was not on the meeting’s agenda, Adamu told them of the president’s position.
According to the member, the information divided the NWC as many of the members kicked against it.
Another member of the NWC and National Youth Leader of the APC, Dayo Israel, also confirmed Adamu’s statement in a Twitter post.
Lawan was a late entrant into the race who picked the presidential nomination form of the party in May, two days before the close of the sale of the forms.
He later said he was a reluctant aspirant, saying it took him a long time to yield to pressure to join the race.
The governor of Jigawa, Abubakar Badaru, also dropped his senatorial nomination form to pick the presidential form about the same time.
He too was said to have succumbed to pressure from northern power brokers to join the race.
According to reliable information, Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, had to flee to Dubai last week after pressure was intensified on him too to pick the nomination forms, despite the sale of the forms closing almost two weeks earlier.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria has said that it cannot sanction the suspended Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, over his alleged involvement in an N80bn fraud because he is not a member of ICAN.
The institute said this on Monday in a statement while responding to a letter written by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda asking ICAN to investigate and sanction Idris who is being probed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
HEDA had called on ICAN to subject Ahmed to the institute’s Disciplinary Tribunal for thorough investigation and sanction.
Responding to the letter, the Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of ICAN, Prof Ahmed Kumshe, said that the Institute cannot sanction Ahmed because he was not a member of ICAN.
He said, “The attention of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria has been drawn to some publications in the media where a group known as Human & Environmental Development Agenda is asking ICAN to investigate and sanction the erstwhile Accountant-General of the Federation being probed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for corruption.
“We wish to inform the organisation and the general public that the former Accountant-General, Alhaji Ahmed Idris, is not a member of ICAN and therefore cannot be investigated and sanctioned by ICAN.
“Our act only allows us to regulate and discipline our members when they err at our Investigating Panel or Disciplinary Tribunal as the case may be.”
Three days after his arrest, Idris was suspended by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, to allow for a seamless investigation.
The Federal Government also appointed Anamekwe Nwabuoku to oversee the Office Accountant-General of the Federation in the interim.
However, the EFCC has released Idris on bail pending further investigations.
A former Governor of Zamfara State, Abdul’Aziz Yari, has also been arrested over the alleged scam.
The Accountant-General of the Federation is the administrative head of the treasury of the country and is saddled with the responsibility of managing receipts and payments of the country.
The federal government says Nigeria Air, the country’s proposed national carrier, has received the Air Transport Licence (ATL) to commence operation.
The federal ministry of aviation, said this on Monday in a tweet via its official page.
This development comes four years after the national carrier was unveiled by Hadi Sirika, minister of state aviation.
The ministry, on Sunday, announced that the proposed national carrier would receive an ATL from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) on Monday.
Following the presentation which was done at NCAA’s headquarters in Abuja, the ministry took to Twitter to share the information.
“The ATL certificate has been presented to Nigeria Air. Congratulations!,” the tweet reads.
“Nigeria Air is here and is going to provide quality service to Nigerians.”
In March, Nigeria Air Limited applied to NCAA for a licence to operate scheduled and non-scheduled passenger and cargo services.
This is after the federal government opened a bid for proposal on the national carrier to both private and public investors.
It added that five percent of the airline shares will be owned by the government as it seeks to improve economic growth through diversification.
According to the minister, the proposed national carrier is to begin operations with three wet-leased aircraft.
The Guardian has gathered that the National Leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is under pressure to forgo his presidential ambition
A party source, at the weekend, disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari had last week sent some party leaders to convince Tinubu to step down “in the interest of the party”.
It was gathered that the leading aspirant was enraged with the message and told the emissaries from the President why he should send them when he could have called or invited him for such discussion.
The source said: “Asiwaju was very angry when they delivered the message. To him, if President Buhari has any reason why he didn’t want to support him for the ticket, there is nothing wrong for the President to call him and discuss it instead of working round to block his chances.”
The source said the position of the President and some people around him might have angered Tinubu during his meeting with party delegates in Abeokuta, Ogun State last Thursday.
It was also discovered that a meeting of party leaders convened in Abuja on Saturday evening failed to convince Tinubu to step down even when it was said that there are plans to provide him with a soft landing by virtue of his position as the party’s National Leader.
A source said: “A meeting was held on Saturday night and part of the agenda was to convince Tinubu to step down but we could not achieve it.
A meeting was held by 3p.m yesterday, and there was no result, but another meeting will hold on Sunday night to prune down the number of aspirants and particularly, to convince Tinubu not to dare the President.”
Oyo State Deputy Governor, Rauf Olaniyan, has announced that he had defected to the All Progressives Congress.
The announcement of his defection from the Peoples Democratic Party was made in his private office, Ojoo, Ibadan, while addressing journalists.
His announcement came after weeks of speculations that he was going to leave the party because of the frosty relationship between him and his boss, Governor Seyi Makinde.
There were reports on Thursday that Makinde had dropped Olaniyan as his running mate for the 2023 governorship poll but no official statement had been issued to that effect.
The deputy governor had in 2020 complained to the Dr. Saka Balogun-led committee to reconcile aggrieved PDP members, that Makinde had sidelined him for a long time.
