NYSC members protest deployment to crisis prone states

Hundreds of corps members for the 2012 Batch ‘B’ yesterday besieged the Gowon House headquarters of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Abuja, seeking immediate redeployment from the northern states over fears of Boko Haram attacks.

The corps members, mainly from the South-West, South-East and South-South geo-political zones, sought immediate re-deployment from states such as Yobe, Plateau, Kaduna, Kano, Sokoto, Adamawa, Bauchi and Borno.

The impatient youths who were visibly afraid of Boko Haram attacks in the northern parts of the country declined all entreaties from workers of the NYSC to first resume at their states of posting before seeking re-deployment, which is the usual process.

“We prefer to die here instead of being killed by Boko Haram in the North”, some of them said, insisting that it was too risky to even set foot on the states.

They blocked the entrance of Gowon House, preventing movement of vehicles in and out of the premises even as a corps member said: “Let them give exemption letters, that is better than serving in Borno State”

However, Director of Mobilisation, Mrs. Mercy Kolajo, said that the corps members have to report to camp first before they could be considered for re-deployment.

According to her, redeployment can only be done in the states where they have to fill forms and not at the headquarters.

“The 2012 Batch ‘B’ prospective corps members who have collected their call-up letters from their institutions should immediately proceed to their respective orientation camps for registration and camping exercise. Whoever is interested in seeking redeployment should make a request for relocation while in camp.

“We appeal to parents to let their children go. They are going to be safe.  NYSC knows what to do in the case of states with challenges”, she said.

Also, Direct of Public Relations, Mrs. Abosede Aderibigbe, added that any corps member who feels threatened has the right to apply for re-deployment, adding that loitering around the headquarters will not help.

Meanwhile, a group under the aegis of Young Journalists’ Forum, has tasked the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and the Ministry of Youths Development on the security of lives of youths deployed to the ‘troubled zones’.

The forum, in a statement signed by its President, Ayodele Samuel, and Secretary, Zacheus Somorin, urged the relevant security agencies to deploy strategies and manpower that would guarantee the lives of these future leaders.

The statement read: “The NYSC remains a unifying factor in our nationhood with the primary aim of fostering national unity and not national disaster in the course of serving their nation and humanity.

“We call on all security agencies, state government and indeed all peace-loving Nigerians to partner with the commission in ensuring an absolute protection and safety of all corps members in their states.”

Also, the Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) said the inability of the federal Government to arrest, prosecute and punish armed hoodlums in parts of Bauchi, Yobe and Borno states who only last year massacred more than a dozen participants of the NYSC scheme makes it a crime against humanity for the same government to deliberately deploy other sets of graduates to the volatile states in the North to be exposed to even more deadly violence.

HURIWA in a statement jointly signed by its National Coordinator and Media Affairs, Emmanuel Onwubiko and Miss Zainab Yusuf, called on government to either disband the NYSC scheme or convert it to compulsory one year non-combat military service whereby the participants would only be restricted to work in military formations spread across the country.

The non-governmental organisation stated thus: “While we note that in recent years, some young Nigerian graduates from the South who were deployed to the North for the compulsory one year national service have lost their lives to the activities of political hoodlums and armed insurgents, the Federal Government has sadly failed to bring these perpetrators to face the consequences of their dastardly crime in the competent courts of law”.

“We are even the more shocked that the same government that has failed to restore law and order in the volatile northern states, has also decided to deploy thousands of young graduates mainly from the South to serve in these violence-prone states such as Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Bauchi, Kano and Plateau. We reject this unwise action by the Federal Government in its totality and we appeal to leaders of conscience in all segments of the society to publicly denounce this move to send out young, innocent, unarmed Nigerian youths to be slaughtered by armed hoodlums”, HURIWA affirmed.

Guardian

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Baby factory syndicate discovered in Rivers, Nigeria

Police in Rivers State have smashed a syndicate, that specialised in selling new babies. Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Mr Ben Ugwuegbulam, who confirmed the development to Vanguard, said the Police arrested a husband and his wife involved in the illicit trade.

He said the two specialised in kidnapping girls and arranging for them to get pregnant, while they would hide the pregnant girls in their custody until they delivered.

Ugwuegbulam said the suspects confessed that as soon as the girls deliver, they would sell the babies. He said: “Rivers State Police Command had arrested one Chigozie John and his wife, Akwarama  and rescued three pregnant women held as captives in the suspects place or residence somewhere in Akpajo.

“On interrogation, the husband and wife confessed to the offence of trafficking in new babies and further admitted that the three pregnant women found in their house were procured to deliver babies that would be sold as soon as they were delivered of their babies.”

Vanguard

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Nigerian extradited to America over $45 million health care fraud

Godwin Chiedo Nzeocha, 45, a naturalized United States citizen originally from the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has been returned to the United States to stand trial in a $45 million health care fraud case, United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced on Thursday.

Nzeocha was charged October 19, 2009 with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, 39 counts of health care fraud, three counts of mail fraud, and three counts of money laundering in relation to his role in the City Nursing Services of Texas Inc. health care fraud conspiracy.

United States security agents were unable to arrest Nzeocha after he was charged in 2009 but was later arrested in Nigeria and extradicted back to Houston on Wednesday 27th June, 2012.

The accused person has since Wednesday made an initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate George C. Hanks, Jr., where the United States requested that he should be remanded in federal custody pending further criminal proceedings.

According to the indictment, Nzeocha signed patient file documents as the provider of physical therapy services he was not qualified to provide and, according to evidence provided during trial of his alleged co-conspirators, which were not, in fact, provided to Medicare beneficiaries.

The indictment also alleges Nzeocha handed out cash payments to recruiters who brought Medicare beneficiaries to City Nursing and to Medicare beneficiaries in return for signatures on blank patient treatment forms.

To date, five people have been convicted in this massive health care fraud conspiracy, including City Nursing's owner, Umawa Oke Imo, who is now serving 27 years in prison.

Nzeocha faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the health care fraud, conspiracy to commit health care fraud, and money laundering charges, upon conviction. A conviction for mail fraud carries an additional maximum punishment of up to 20 years in prison.

This case has been investigated by the FBI, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, the Department of Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General, and the Texas Attorney General's Office-Medicare Fraud Control Unit. Special thanks is extended to the Nigerian government and the Office of International Affairs in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, who provided assistance. Assistant United States Attorney Julie Redlinger is prosecuting the case.

An indictment is a formal accusation of criminal conduct, not evidence. A defendant is presumed innocent unless convicted through due process of law.

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The big kerosene fraud in Nigeria

Nigerians have been forced to pay as much as N150/litre of kerosene instead of the government subsidised rate of N50 because the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, chose to sell kerosene to depot owners rather than retail outlet owners as required of it.

A Report by the Technical Committee on Payment of Fuel Subsidies, submitted to Mr President and exclusively obtained by Vanguard, revealed that the NNPC flouted the policy on its monopoly to import kerosene, which comes in as Dual Purpose Kerosene, DPK, at subsidized rate to serve the masses.

Rather than deliver the product to retail outlet owners so that it could benefit the masses for which it was being subsidized, the NNPC, instead, chose to sell it for patronage, or what the committee described as "rent" to depot owners.

The struggle to buy Kerosene, an household commodity for cooking, becomes more challenging even at a NNPC petrol Station in Lagos. Photo by Lamidi Bamidele

The depot owners who got the product at N40.90/L ex-depot price, in turn sold it to marketers and retail owners at between N115 and N125/L depending on the operator, a development that led to the masses buying the product at 300 per cent increase at N150/L instead of the recommended price of N50/L.

"The distribution of DPK which was being imported solely by NNPC was skewed in favour of depot owners who have no retail outlets. Two-thirds of the kerosene sold by NNPC between 2009 and 2011 was sold to depot owners and "middle men" who in turn sold the product to owners of retail outlets at inflated prices of between N115.00 and N125.00 per litre (compared to the ex depot price of N40.90), leaving consumers to pay higher prices than the N50.00 per litre directed by Government," the report said.

It added: "For several years now, the country has been incurring huge subsidy bills for kerosene and its citizens are not receiving the benefit - instead the country has been financing "rent" for the middlemen."

NNPC has many mega stations and retail outlets

MOMAN - is the Major Marketers Association of Nigeria, which members include Mobil Oil Nigeria Plc; Total Plc; MRS Oil Plc (formerly Chenron Oil Nigeria); Forte Oil Plc (Formerly AP); Oando Oil Plc; and Conoil Plc. The association controls nine per cent of retail outlets with 2,453 owned by members

IPMAN - Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, own in joint venture with Purebond of UK, the Nigerian Independent Petroleum Company, NIPCP Plc, and has about 23,026 member retail outlets to control 85 per cent of the retail market.

DAPPMA - Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association are the owners of the tank farms and petroleum storage facilities and only 403 member outlets and controls only four per cent of the market. Yet, they got between 60 and 70 per cent of the kerosene.

Further investigations revealed that because kerosene comes in as DPK, the depot owners preferred to divert the product for aviation turbine kerosene, ATK, or Jet A1, to reap higher profits from the product as opposed to selling it as House Hold Kerosene, HHK, which the masses rely on for domestic energy to cook their foods and light their lanterns.

Yet, the NNPC collected the sum of N331.55billion as kerosene subsidy for 2011 alone, when hardly any Nigerian could buy the product at N50/L.

This has remained since 2009, a situation that led to the acute scarcity of kerosene for the greater part of the last three years.

The report, which revealed how oil marketers and petroleum dealers allegedly perfected series of fraud through products imports that led to the payment of over N2 trillion as subsidy claims in 2011 alone, also showed that in all the established cases of malfeasance, the regulatory agencies colluded with the concerned parties to boycott due process for the importation of the particular product.

NNPC flouted presidential directive

In the case of kerosene, the situation was so bad that late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, on June 15, 2009, ordered the NNPC to stop making further deductions as claims for subsidy on kerosene.

"In spite of a directive issued by President Yar'Adua on June 15, 2009 that NNPC should cease subsidy claims on kerosene, PPPRA resumed the processing of kerosene subsidy claims in June 2011 and NNPC resumed the deduction of kerosene subsidy claims to the tune of N331 ,547,318,068.06 in 2011," the report revealed.

The report noted that: "The current lack of regulation (of subsidy claims) has led to NNPC's introduction of practices that are not permitted or recognised by the current PSF guidelines that if unchecked by NNPC's internal control mechanisms may allow for significant leakages."

Checking fraud through forensic audit

To discontinue the criminalities, the committee called for a forensic audit of the NNPC's subsidy payment process. This it said, is because "while the committee conducted detailed reviews of several aspects of the subsidy payment process, it noted that the process for NNPC is significantly more complicated than the process for the private sector and would require a thorough forensic audit."

It therefore urged the Federal Government to "appoint consultants to carry out the forensic audit of the NNPC subsidy claim process. This is without prejudice to the committee's recommendations on the process from its high level review."

It further recommended that such audit should cover, among others:

- Funding for subsidy paid to NNPC

- Process for determination of products imported by NNPC

- Documentation for NNPC's transactions for imported petroleum products

- Verification of documentation with NNPC's suppliers and other agencies involved in the discharge of petroleum products - e.g. DPR, PPPRA, Government auditors, independent inspectors, e.t.c.

- Review of documentation submitted to PPPRA by NNPC

- Review of PPPRA's certification process for NNPC subsidy claims

- Reconciliation of the deducted subsidy claims from the proceeds of crude oil sales by NNPC to the subsidy claims certified by PPPRA.

Committee's recommendations

Since the poor Nigerians were obviously not getting the benefit of the huge cost to the nation in kerosene subsidy, the committee further urged the federal government to also: Allow both private importers who meet the eligibility requirements of the PSF guidelines and NNPC to import kerosene and pay kerosene subsidy under the PSF. The role of private importers in the distribution of the product should be monitored properly by PPPRA and DPR. Eliminate the current financing of rent for a few by restricting NNPC's local distribution to only groups that own significant retail outlets - i.e. MOMAN, IPMAN and NNPC Retail at the approved ex-depot price.

The Committee recommends that NNPC's roles in the downstream petroleum industry be regulated appropriately by the existing regulatory agencies in the industry i.e. PPPRA and DPR.

The Committee recommends that:

- PPPRA must always regulate and determine the quantity of products to be imported by NNPC in line with its mandate and the current allocation process for NNPC. All importation of products by NNPC (within or outside PPPRA approved quotas) must be approved by PPPRA. A rigorous process of volume control that will facilitate identification of red flags will reduce malpractices in subsidy claims.

- That accounting best practices should be adopted by NNPC to enable separate audit trails of sales proceeds of imported and locally refined petroleum products and to determine the cost of domestic refining of petroleum products.

- That Government should always give documented and clear directives to avoid ambiguity, indiscretion and to encourage compliance. Given the significant financial impact of the NNPC subsidy process on the finances of the nation, appropriate steps should be taken by Government to document and legalise the process for NNPC's subsidy claims in a transparent and unambiguous manner.

- That the relevant Government agencies such as PPPRA and DPR in line with their mandates as regulators and others such as the Ministry of National Planning, Federal Bureau of Statistics e.t.c. using the information at their disposal on locally refined, imported and stored volumes of petroleum products should be mandated by Government to continually determine the nations' daily consumption levels of petroleum products independent of the industry operators.

- The allocation of kerosene directly to marketers with retail outlets, specifically IPMAN, MOMAN and NNPC Retail based on the strength of their retail outlets. This will ensure that the impact of the subsidy will be felt by the masses. In addition, the permit to import DPK should be liberalized to include the marketers who meet the eligibility criteria under the PSF guidelines and the subsidy regulated under the PSF scheme as currently obtains for PMS.

In the long run, the option of using cooking gas should be explored. It is expected that the cost of subsidising kerosene would be saved if more Nigerians embrace the use of LPG. In addition, the Committee is unable to recommend payment of subsidy claims on DPK in view of the extant presidential directive of June 15, 2009.

The Committee

It would be recalled that the idea of the Technical Committee on Subsidy was hatched on February 28, 2012, and was meant to "review outstanding claims for fuel subsidies," as fallout of the stakeholders' meeting of the downstream petroleum sector.

The meeting was chired by the Coordinating Minister of the Economy/Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okojo-Iweala, who constituted the 10-man committee on April 17, 2012, headed by the Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Access Bank Plc, Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede.

The terms of reference included to authenticate the backlog of outstandingpayments of subsidy payments to marketers in 2011; verify the legitimacy of backlog of claims already submitted by marketers for 2011; and review any other pertinent issues that may rise from the exercise.

Other members included the Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, Dr. Bright Okogu; Director General, Debt Management Office, Dr. Abraham Nwankwo; Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Jonah Otunla; Executive Secretary, Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPRA, Mr. Reginald Stanley.

Others were the Group Executive Director, Finance and Accounts, NNPC; and representatives of the CBN, Bankers Committee as well as major and independent marketers.

Vanguard

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Nigerian black market oil traders offer huge discount to international traders

Criminals in the country’s oil sector, who claim to have privileged access to crude oil, are offering the commodity at huge discounts to interested traders.

Oil traders, however, view the deals as too good to be genuine, as documents from the criminals’ companies show that spot cargoes of several hundred thousand barrels of crude can be picked up at discounts of up to $10m.

Traders in the oil sector told Reuters that the documents were suspiciously flawed.

According to them, this indicates that financial crimes in the country have definitely hit the oil industry.

The obscure firms involved in the fraudulent activities include one United-Kingdom registered company purporting to be near the top of a sales chain in which oil cargoes can change hands up to half a dozen times before being refined.

Two of the firms said they were able to sell oil cheaply because of special access to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s contracts.

The NNPC, in a bid to warn oil marketers of scammers in the sector, had placed a “Scam Alert” on its website drawing attention to the “unsavoury characters purporting to be bona fide staff of the NNPC or contractors to NNPC or purchasers of Nigerian crude oil or contractors to the Nigerian government.”

Industry analysts said the difficulty faced by the present administration in making reforms during time of considerable doubt over who was responsible for selling oil was one factor enabling the fraudsters.

Though some measures were recently adopted to streamline the entry for participation in NNPC’s 2012-2013 term allocations, the results have not appeared since the initial tender document was released in March.

Five written offers from some of the firms showed a close resemblance to official paperwork circulated among traders, including documents attributed to NNPC, stamps from terminal operators and shipping lists with vessels and loading dates.

“They are full of imagination,” a West African oil trader told Reuters, while commenting on the document.

Another oil trader with a London-based oil firm suspected that some of the offers were attempts to resell the oil siphoned off by thieves in the Niger Delta, since the majority of offers were for the local grade Bonny Light.

“A lot of this oil on the side may be bunkered (stolen) and does go to people in the Delta to sell. It is a side business and I think some buyers are doing good business there,” the source, who preferred not to be named, said.

Nigeria’s oil is sold by equity holders including oil majors Total and Royal Dutch Shell, which have a stake in production and via term contracts handed mostly to oil trading firms.

The large number of companies involved in selling oil via term contracts means it can be tough for even experienced traders to tell the difference between real and fake offers.

Industry sources said the number of companies selling Nigeria’s oil increased dramatically after Jonathan’s election as part of a strategy to broaden local participation in the country’s oil sector.

But critics point to this as an example of the cronyism that is helping to buttress support for Nigeria’s political elite.

“It will be interesting to see whether the issuing of the latest crude tender to include Nigerian companies is a return to the political patronage of the past dressed up as increasing Nigerian content,” said an oil industry consulting source in Nigeria.

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