Ex-president Jonathan’s aide, 3 other top officials named in $20million bribery scandal in Switzerland
Three former top officials of the Nigerian Ports Authority and a former special adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan have been named in a massive foreign bribery scandal that has led to the conviction of a company and some of its top officials in Switzerland.
Premium Times gathered that Dredging International Services (Cyprus) Ltd was sentenced to a fine of one million Swiss Francs and asked to refund 36 million Swiss Francs illegal profit after it was indicted for allegedly making illicit payments to a former Managing Director of the NPA, Adebayo Sarumi; a former Managing Director of NPA’s Eastern Ports, Felix Ovbude; a former Executive Director of Finance at the NPA, Abba Murtala Mohammed; and Daniel Afam-Obi, a former executive assistant to Sullivan Akachukwu Nwankpo who was ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s special adviser on technical matters.
While Messrs Sarumi, Ovbude and Mohammed allegedly collectively received $2.6million in kickbacks, Mr. Afam-Obi was said to have been paid $157,000 for unknown reasons. Another $18million dollar was passed to companies in which some yet unknown Nigerian officials have interests.
Dredging International Services (Cyprus) Ltd is part of a consortium which formed The Bonny Channel Management Limited that in turn entered into a joint venture arrangement with the NPA to form The Bonny Channel Company saddled with “creating and maintaining a safe navigational passage for all marine users to and in the Eastern Ports of Bonny Island, Onne, Okrika and Port-Harcourt”.
The NPA holds 60 per cent equity in the JVC while The Bonny Channel Management Limited consortium (comprising Dredging International, Vinci, IPEM and Dapesa Limited) has the remaining 40 per cent.
It was gathered that each year, NPA awards the company contracts worth $70million without any open or competitive bidding as required by Nigerian law, and the firm is believed to have so far cornered jobs worth at least N717 billion.
Premium Times also said that the Managing Director of NPA, Hadiza Bala Usman, said she was not aware of the case, and that no one or agency had discussed the matter with her since she assumed duties at the Authority on July 18, 2016.
According to Premium Times, “when contacted by telephone, Mr. Ovbude, who is a now managing consultant with Lagos-based Renaissance Consulting, first said, “I don’t know what they are talking about.” But when he was told that the company which paid the bribe had confessed, the former NPA official said, “I worked and many people worked.”
It’s one thing to say you are specifically in charge, but issue can come up and you are exonerated.”
When told that he was specifically mentioned in the charges and that Dredging International had been convicted, he said, “I am not told, I am not aware.”
