Nigeria charges ex-attorney general in court over $1.3 billion oil deal

Nigeria’s financial crime watchdog charged former attorney general Mohammed Adoke in court on Thursday for allegedly receiving bribes to facilitate a $1.3 billion oil deal, the agency said in a statement.

It is the latest development in one of the oil industry’s biggest corruption scandals, over the 2011 sale of the offshore oilfield known as OPL 245 by Malabu Oil and Gas.

A resulting investigation has entangled two of the sectors biggest players, Shell and Eni, as well as an array of powerful figures from the previous Nigerian government.

“Adoke is accused of using public office for gratification,” said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission statement, adding there were 42 charges against the former official.

Adoke was charged with receiving the U.S. dollar equivalent of 300 million naira ($980,550) in 2013 to facilitate the OPL 245 deal and help waive taxes for Shell and Eni, according to a charge sheet filed in an Abuja high court last week.

The former attorney general pleaded not guilty to all charges, according to the commission’s statement. Reuters was unable to reach Adoke or his lawyer for immediate comment.

The next hearing, for bail applications, will be Jan. 27, the statement said.

Shell’s and Eni’s local subsidiaries have also been charged with illegally assisting Adoke in waiving the taxes, according to last week’s charge sheet.

Malabu was owned by former petroleum minister Dan Etete.

Shell and Eni, and their executives, have denied any wrongdoing. Etete has also denied wrongdoing.

Reuters

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Kanu Nwankwo loses daughter

Former Super Eagles player, Kanu Nwankwo Wednesday announced the death of one of the first beneficiaries of his heart foundation turned daughter, Enitan.

“Why why why one of Kanu heart foundation gone,” Kanu said on Twitter.

“My daughter gone gone gone I can’t believe this R I P Eniton God knows all.”

Kanu’s wife Amara Kanu on Instagram said the 21-year-old died of complications from malaria.

Enitan who was 2-year-old when she benefitted from the former Arsenal player’s foundation just completed her university education before moving to Nigeria.

Amara said she moved back to Lagos to work for the Kanuprior to her death.

“Enitan was just 2 years old when she had her open surgery done in London courtesy of the Kanu Heart Foundation,” Amara said on Instagram on Wednesday.

“She then became part of my family and 19 years later after completing her university studies, she came back to work with us in our Lagos office until she passed yesterday from some complications with malaria.”

Kanu started the Heart Foundation in 2000 after he survived a heart condition.

The foundation has “successfully helped 538 children” get open-heart surgeries in hospitals across the world and spent about $4.2 million.

The Guardian

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Airports in Nigeria brace for coronavirus

International airports yesterday went on red alert as they intensified the screening of inbound passengers, following an outbreak of the deadly coronavirus in China.

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) advised passengers and other airport users to comply with all quarantine procedures at airports nationwide to prevent the importation of the virus.

Airports worldwide also increased health screenings and the implementation of new quarantine procedures as officials hurried to slow the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, a new SARS-like illness that first appeared in Hubei province, China.

The General Manager (Corporate Affairs) at FAAN, Henrietta Yakubu, said all the equipment and personnel used in combating the deadly Ebola virus in 2014 were still much in place at the airports and were being deployed accordingly.
She said FAAN had always had thermal scanners at its airports to monitor the temperature of passengers and capture their pictures. “When passengers walk pass the scanner, it registers their temperature. And if it’s too high, they are pulled aside for observation. FAAN, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health, has confirmed the adequacy of the facilities at the nation’s airports, to prevent the importation of the virus through the airports. Passengers are therefore advised to submit themselves for routine quarantine checks whenever they are asked to,” Yakubu said.

With the coronavirus (nCoV) reportedly infecting over ‘10,000’ persons and killing nine, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) disclosed that it had set up a multi-sectoral technical group to handle the threat. It advised Nigerians to remain calm, while travellers from Nigeria to Wuhan, China, have been asked to avoid contact with sick people, animals (alive or dead), and animal markets.

Coronaviruses are zoonotic, which implies that they are normally transmitted between animals and people. But a novel coronavirus is a new strain of the virus that has not been previously identified in humans. Some coronaviruses can be transmitted from person to person, usually after close contact with an infected patient, in a household or health care setting. Several known coronaviruses are circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans, until now.

To reduce the risk of spreading the virus, NCDC advised members of the public to adhere to the following measures: wash your hands regularly with soap under running water; cover your mouth and nose properly with handkerchief or tissue paper when sneezing and/or coughing; you may also cough into your elbow if a handkerchief is not available; avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing; avoid self-medication; and report to the nearest health facility when you experience any of the above-mentioned symptoms.

In a statement by its Director General, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, in Abuja yesterday, NCDC said the Port Health Services unit of the Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria had been placed on alert and had heightened screening measures at the points of entry. It also said that in China, exit screening measures had been enhanced for travellers from Wuhan city at the Points of Entry (PoE) -airports and ground transport stations- since the January 14, 2020, and this includes temperature checks, combined with provision of information and masks to passengers with fever, as well as directing symptomatic passengers to health facilities for follow up.

Asked if Nigeria is ready to diagnose, treat and prevent the spread of any case of coronavirus, Ihekweazu told The Guardian: “As this is a new strain of the coronavirus, a standardised diagnostic test is still being developed. We are working closely with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to access reagents molecular diagnosis in the NCDC National Reference Laboratory. As the situation evolves, we will know more.”

According to the Director General of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), Prof. Babatunde Lawal Salako, the institute in collaboration with NCDC is capable of diagnosing and containing possible cases of coronavirus in the country.

He explained: “Last year, we sent three of our researchers to China for three months to learn the art and skills and research of pathogen identification especially viruses. So, this knowledge is with them. We also have about two of them who went for another two weeks course. Two people also went to Institute Pasteur in Senegal, a World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional lab, which is where Nigeria often sends samples to during outbreaks and they spent about two weeks. All of these are to prepare the capacity of the institute to assist public health institutions in making detection of pathogens during outbreak.”

The Guardian

Slum dwellers in Nigeria left homeless after mass eviction

Authorities in Nigeria evicted thousands of impoverished residents from a Lagos slum, leaving many homeless, residents and eyewitnesses told CNN.

Residents described scenes of panic and confusion Tuesday as hundreds of navy personnel pushed into Tarkwa Bay and neighboring island communities on the Lagos Lagoon, ordering them to leave within an hour.

Navy Cmdr. Thomas Otuji, a spokesman for the operation launched in December, said the planned demolition of buildings aims to tackle oil theft along pipelines that run through the coastal city.
Mohammed Zanna, a resident and paralegal, told CNN that the forces shot sporadically in the air as residents, who said they had no prior notice, scrambled to find their families and pack their belongings.

"Everyone was panicking and packing everything they could carry. The men were shooting in the air and shouting that people should leave," Zanna told CNN.

Many residents queued at the harbor till nightfall, trying to secure boats to transport their families from the island to the city, said Megan Chapman, co-director of the Justice & Empowerment Initiatives, a nonprofit that assists poor communities. She visited neighborhoods while the evictions were ongoing, Chapman said.

"We saw dozens of boats filled with belongings and families trying to see how they were going to leave the island. Most of them did not know," Chapman said.

A consortium of advocacy groups, including JEI and the Nigeria Slum/Informal Settlement Federation, put the number of displaced persons in the thousands.

The navy's Otuji said he did not have an exact figure of those impacted by the eviction, but residents in affected communities had been told to leave before the exercise began.
Residents were still packing their belongings out of the waterfront settlement on Wednesday, according to Zanna.

Tarkwa Bay, home to at least 4,500 people, is among dozens of communities with structures that have been marked for demolition by the navy. All are accessible only by water.
In some communities, bulldozers have already done their work.

Otuji said residents had been advised to leave in December after authorities found that the majority of homes on the islands were built along pipelines. They also discovered that some structures in the slum were being used as a disguise for crude oil theft operations, he said.

"We found at least 300 illegal spots and dug out pits where oil products were being tapped and sold illegally, even to neighboring countries," Otuji said.

"They have been there doing all sorts of illegalities. This is dangerous for people to be living in these areas with oil pipelines. What else can we do but to make sure that we salvage the situation?" he said.

Chapman said authorities should have targeted those involved, instead of evicting innocent families in the community, mostly inhabited by fishermen and artisans.

"The law does not allow for collective punishment and summary demolition as a security measure. If there are individuals involved in these activities, what the law requires is for the individuals to be arrested and prosecuted for any crime they might have committed," Chapman told CNN.

People living in waterfront communities in Lagos, a city of 21 million people, have been forcefully evicted in recent years by authorities citing safety concerns.

In 2016, more than 30,000 families were sent packing from Otodo Gbame, a fishing community, after state security agents allegedly destroyed their homes.

Many of them are still homeless despite a court ruling that the Lagos state government should resettle those affected by the demolition.

CNN

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