There is no doubt anymore that Jim Obazee is on a hatchet job for Bola Tinubu, his federal government and the Yoruba faction of the APC.
If you wondered how one man without the backing of any corporate organ will be assigned to audit or probe such a landmark institution as the central Bank of Nigeria, you must now, after a few dexterous moves and pronouncements by Obazee himself, begin to know that his real assigned job is to force the economy, particularly the banking industry to the control of Bola Tinubu and his henchmen.
The purchase of Union Bank by Titan Trust Bank since over two years has riled a section of the Yoruba and has been interpreted as a major blow to Yoruba control of the Banking sector of the economy. It is now evident that the main reason the Jim Obazee committee was appointed to probe the CBN is to deploy the powers of the federal government to recover Union Bank and the other Keystone Bank from the new owners and force them back to the control of the previous owners and managers who ran them to near bankruptcy.
Obazee has not been able to establish his claimed connection between Godwin Emefiele and the purchase of the failed Union and Keystone banks, even as he claims that Godwin Emefiele bought these banks using proxies. He also has not been able to establish how the purchase transaction offended any aspect of law. But Obazee even without these evidence, claims that the banks were illegally purchased and was bought with funds from the Central Bank.
Nothing Jim Obaze has said connects Emefiele to the banks mentioned. Jim Obaze should first convincingly establish the fact of Emefiele’s purchase of these banks through proxies before trying to nullify the transactions. The laws of Nigeria require this of Jim Obazee. And who, for the sake of good order, gave Jim Obazee the power to nullify a legal transaction? Neither the CBN nor the federal government itself has that power.
The acquisition of the two banks have components of direct foreign investment from “Tropical General Investment Group” with loans from AFREXIM BANK as stated. Has Jim Obazee been able to refute this? Does the federal government have the legal authority to seize private property without recourse to the law and the courts?
Jim Obazee with the self-evident backing of the government that appointed him, has forcibly and without the backing of Law, constituted himself into the accuser, judge and jury in the case of the purchase of Union and Keystone Banks, a transaction that has been closed for over two years without a protest from anyone involved.
As matters stand today, Obazee it appears, is under instruction to upend a valid and legitimate transaction without evidence of wrong doing and without recourse to the law and the courts.
The Bola Tinubu faction of the APC will find out soon enough that they have done more to destroy possibilities of the ingress of foreign investments into Nigeria, far beyond the values of Union and Keystone banks that they are forcing out of the hands of the new owners.
Everyday, Bola Tinubu’s government is wildly and without a sense of caution working assiduously to place the economy of Nigeria firmly under the control of his kinsmen, the Yoruba. We point to the creation of the Ministry of the Marine and Blue Economy which in the perceived actions of it’s creators is assigned to develop Lagos, it’s ports and industry. But Lagos has only about 50 km of the 580 km coastline of Nigeria and little, if anything, of the riches of the marine economy of Nigeria. Lagos does not have the Petroleum wealth, the mangrove forests, the rich tropical fish and shrimp population of the bight of Benin up to Cameroon, the natural deep sea port of Forcados or the marine skills of the coastal populations of Ijaw, Itshekiri, Opobo and the Anang. But Bola Tinubu is determined to implement a skewed development of a marine and Blue economy to move federal investments to Lagos and to further develop Lagos with the wealth and resources of the Niger Delta.
We also point to the plot by the Bola Tinubu government to abrogate the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs which was created by President Yar’adua in 2009. It was the strong intervention of Chief Edwin Clark that stopped that chicanery.
We were all here when Modibbo Sannusi as governor of the Central Bank withdrew licenses of many banks and sold them out to new owners from other regions just because as he said then, “fifty percent of bank ownership in Nigeria are concentrated in the hands of South-South people, particularly Delta state”. Oceanic Bank, Platinum Bank, Fortune Bank, Allstate Trust Bank etc had their structure and ownership forcefully altered.
The entire Petroleum industry is under the management and control of Northern Muslims and Yoruba without the top level participation of the people from the Niger Delta. Bola Tinubu has not seen the injustice of the displacement of the people who own the oil from the management of the industry created out of it, but he wants to seize banks legally purchased and return them to the same people who ran them aground.
Jim Obaze has called on the Federal Government to seize the two acquired banks, Union Bank and Keystone Bank, without adjudication and not minding that his incautious statements can create a run on the banks and destroy them. We must wonder how anyone can call a man with such uneducated pronouncements an accountant.
We all keenly wait to see how that invitation to illegality is implemented.
