$418m Paris Club Fees: The Facts, Fictions

RingTrue By Yemi Adebowale

Phone 08054699539

Amassive US$418 million. That’s what six consultants have been battling to grab from the 36 Nigerian states and 774 local governments, supposedly for facilitating refunds of the over-deductions against states and local governments, in obligations to Paris Club, an association of Western creditors. This is evidently one of the highest professional fees in the world. At the official rate, it should be about N180 billion. This is more than the 2022 budgets of some states. Recall that the federal government, under the Obasanjo presidency, had paid $12 billion to secure an $18 billion debt exit from the Paris Club. State governors later discovered over-deductions and took on the federal government using the Nigeria’s Governors Forum (NGF). The amount disbursed to the states in 2017 under the refund was over N1 trillion.

Several state governors, between 2005 and 2019, are culpable in this weird $418 million consultancy fees, but the main conspirator is the former Zamfara State governor, Abdulaziz Yari. It was during his tenure as chairman of the NGF that all sorts of consultants were recruited (for selfish reasons) to facilitate the refunds of the over-deductions. This governor certainly has a lot of questions to answer on these sloppy deals with consultants. I will return to that later.

However, it does not stop these consultants from being safely called rent seekers. They are trying to gain wealth without any reciprocal contribution of productivity. The services they claim to have offered are contained in a FAAC Reconciliation Committee Report constituted in 2005 and submitted in 2007, with recommendations on how states and LGAs should be refunded the excess deductions from the Paris Club repayments. This is the truth that must be told. The documents are still there. So, which useless services did they render? These consultants, in conjunction with some dangerous elements in government are determined to fleece Nigeria.

Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, as NGF Chairman, exposed the creepiness in the claims of the consultants. That was why the 2019 set of governors refused to pay them. The consultants can’t even provide any contract signed individually by the governors, who they claim gave them jobs. The 774 local government chairmen of that era in Nigeria don’t know them. They can’t show any evidence of rational contractual agreement before embarking on the bizarre job they claimed to have done. Suddenly, they came up with bills running into millions of USD, after the refunds to the states had been made.

The consultants later went to court to obtain judgement compelling the federal government to pay them from the shares of the states in the federation account. They claim it was a consent judgement. Fayemi has since been fighting this incongruity very hard. The 2019 class of governors insist the states and local governments were not parties to the court action which resulted in the purported judgement being bandied by the consultants. The judgement is clearly not binding on the state and local governments. There are no documents to the contrary.

The governors are at the Appeal Court to challenge the decision of Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, that threw out their demand to stop the federal government from debiting their accounts in respect of the purported judgement. In the ruling, Justice Ekwo advised the states to go and get the so-called consent judgement obtained by the consultants vacated. This makes sense.

The role of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, in these shenanigans has left me bemused. Last year, based on Malami’s recommendations and Buhari’s concurrence, the Federal Ministry of Finance directed the Debt Management Office to commence issuance of promissory notes to the consultants. This is also weird. Why the rush to make such payments when there are litigations? The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, the DG of DMO, and Malami were duly notified of these court actions. Why should the finance minister then direct that Promissory Notes be issued in favour of the consultants? I see a long chain of corruption here.

I agree with the current NGF leadership that the decision by Malami to throw his weight behind the consultants battling desperately to grab $418 million from the accounts of states and local governments raises questions of propriety and the spirit of justice.

Malami has suddenly become the Attorney General of the consultants. Last year, he argued that the consultants obtained four judgements, “two of which are consent judgements” and that the governors “consented, expressed no objection to the payments and had already paid part of the debts to the said contractors and consultants.” But he failed to indicate that the governors were already in court to appeal the judgements.

Besides, if indeed Malami is Attorney of the Federation, he should have initiated appeals against the judgements immediately he got wind of them, because huge public funds are at stake.

Fayemi has been doing a good job in the legal battle with the consultants aiming for Nigeria’s $418 million. One of them, a beneficiary of a $142 million Promissory Note, who had lost his case for payment of the consultancy fee at the high court and Court of Appeal, further appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on June 3, 2022 dismissed the appeal as lacking in merit and also made it clear that neither the NGF nor ALGON has the power to award contracts and charge the same directly to the Federation Account as done in this case.

The apex court ruled: “The funds belonging to a state or local government must be kept in an account belonging to the state or local government as the case may be and disbursed or expended by the state strictly in the manner and for the purposes prescribed in the Constitution and an appropriation law or as prescribed by the House of Assembly of the State and in the manner and for purposes prescribed in the Constitution, a local government law, or as prescribed by the Council of the local government.”

The dismissal of this case by the Supreme Court also clearly affects payments to two lawyers to the firm who were likewise beneficiaries of Promissory Notes by the DMO.

The Fayemi-led NGF is also challenging, either on appeal or in other courts, the claims by the five other consultants.

Fayemi insists that these cases are pending and no steps ought to be taken to enforce the Judgment and alter the status quo until the matters are fully determined, adding that a caveat restraining all parties concerned and the public from dealing or honouring Promissory Notes issued had earlier been published.

It was on the strength of all these that President Buhari, last week, directed Malami, and Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed to halt the payment of $418 million to the contractors.

It is pertinent to also look at the very sad Abdulaziz Yari era as NGF chairman, when all sorts of consultants were engaged for the Paris Club refund. In 2007, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) carried out a number of sting operations on the payments made to the consultants by the NGF, after collecting the Paris Club refund. It was discovered that the payments found their way to accounts connected to many of the governors of that era.

At a point, the EFCC discovered a N10 billion slush fund. Investigation revealed that the money was fraudulently diverted by the NGF under the usual guise of paying consultancy fees. The anti-graft agency was in court in December 2017 and a Federal High Court in Abuja approved the temporary forfeiture of seven accounts which the EFCC alleged were used by the NGF leadership to launder the N10 billion. Justice Gabriel Kolawole, who approved the temporary forfeiture, gave seven days to the account owners to file an application which must be served on the EFCC. Nobody came forward to challenge the forfeiture order.

Earlier in 2017, another Federal High Court in Abuja ordered an interim forfeiture of N500 million and $500,000, alleged to have been laundered by another governor, using another set of consultants. The sums were recovered from two firms by the anti-graft agency and Justice Nnamdi Dimgba (now retired) gave the interim forfeiture order on June 30, 2017. Nobody from the affected firms came forward to challenge the forfeiture order.

Also, in 2017, the EFCC obtained another interim forfeiture of N1.8 billion paid to an additional set of consultants by the Yari-led NGF. In fact, one of the consultants confirmed to EFCC’s detectives that he did not do any job for the NGF. This particular consultant had $3 million transferred into his account by the NGF from the Paris Club repayment to states. This forfeiture order was also not challenged. By my calculation, a whopping N38 billion must have been paid to the ghost consultants from the N766.53 billion Paris Club refunds to the governors as at October 2017.

Virtually all the governors nominated ghost consultants for the fees paid out to the specialist by the NGF. This is evidently a money laundering arrangement. When the first tranche came out, the NGF allegedly caused the Central Bank of Nigeria to pay N19.4 billion to consultants.

The EFCC in a 2017 report stated: “N10bn of the N19.4bn paid to the NGF account by the CBN was fraudulently disbursed to the seven accounts of companies and individuals, who were not part of the said BizPlus GSCL Consortium. Substantial amounts from the fraudulent disbursements into these accounts have further been laundered to some other accounts or withdrawn as cash. The NGF had agreed to pay a success fee of two per cent to BizPlus GSCL Consortium. But upon the success of the recovery, rather than stick to the two per cent fee, the NGF caused the Central Bank of Nigeria to deduct five per cent, amounting to the N19.4bn.”

Many can now understand when I said Yari has a lot of explanations to do about weird payments to shadowy Paris Club refund consultants and on the current case with six consultants hounding Nigerian states and local governments in courts.

The Rascality of Electricity Workers

Electricity workers shut the national power grid on Wednesday, throwing the entire country into darkness for several hours. They cared less about the effect on business and domestic consumers. The workers cared less about the impact on productivity. They cared less about those who will die in hospitals due to sudden disruption of electricity supply. The workers cared less about the consumers that had made advance payments for this service. Billions of Naira went down the drain while this reign of terror lasted. No matter how just the demands of these electricity workers might be, that decision to throw the entire country into darkness made nonsense of it. Common sense dictates that they should find a way of resolving their issues with their employers without hurting consumers. They did not do this. Shutting power stations and setting off grid collapse is terrorism and economic sabotage. The leaders of that madness that occurred last Wednesday deserve to be thoroughly hammered. Unfortunately, we don’t have a government that can do this. This is the weakest federal government in the history of Nigeria. What a shame!

One of the demands of the workers was for the reversal of the directive of the board of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) mandating principal managers in acting capacity to appear for a promotion interview. They insisted that the directive was in contravention of the workers’ conditions of service and career progression paths, adding that “it was unilaterally done without the relevant stakeholders.” What garbage! The leaders of these workers should be on trial for terrorism and economic damage.