“…we can tell with an irrefutable degree of certainty that the SEC and the House Committee are birds of a corrupt feather! Summary of the mess is, a corrupt Committee attempted to probe a corrupt Commission, a gang of armed robbers attempted to police a bunch of thieves; and the allegations and counter-accusations have effectively putting paid to the need for a public hearing.”
LAGOS, March 24, (THEWILL) – You have to admire Arunma Oteh’s guts! For all the talk about the weakness of the feminine vessel, the supposedly hunted director-general of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has succeeded in spotlighting the National Assembly as the armpit of conscientious legislating on the continent, and perhaps anywhere in the world.
On March 15, 2012 — a day when Oteh and the SEC were supposed to be under scrutiny by the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Market and Other Financial Institutions — she stunned the world by alleging that the committee had demanded a combined bribe of N44 from her. Of one of the demands, she stared sternly into the eyes of Honourable Herman Hembe, and asked, “In asking SEC to contribute N39 million for this public hearing, [do] you think that you are not undermining your capacity to carry out your duties?” She also censured Hembe for securing SEC’s sponsorship for a conference in Dominican Republic yet neither attending it nor returning the money for the ticket.
For those who watched video clippings of the session, a thoroughly befuddled Hembe could only strenuously fumble for words in reply to Oteh’s effortlessly delivered accusations. Finally, he managed to say something: “Please let this not be a ploy to distract us from achieving the main objective of this hearing. I believe that we have the representatives of the ICPC and the EFCC with us. Strong issues of corruption have been made against me…. [and] against the committee. So, it is our hope that you will investigate me deeply and investigate the committee too. I give the permission for that and that is my ruling. We will proceed with the business of the committee.”
Earlier, the Committee had accused Director-General Oteh of sundry allegations, such as squandering a princely N30 million on hotel accommodation in just eight months, expending N850,000 (later clarified as N85,000 for a meal eaten by a team of experts) on just a meal. In a matter of days, the committee claimed to have unearthed documents proving underhand dealings in the handling of the DG’s accommodation and official cars.
One week later, it is Hembe who is being popularly accused of wrongdoing (not that SEC is itself clean, anyway). To be sure, the accusations and counter-accusations encircling Oteh and Hembe are truly delicate to be outright interpreted, consequently necessitating background checks into the antecedents of the two personalities. Until March 15 when the skirmish was birthed, who exactly was Hembe? And who, really, was Oteh?
Herman Iorwase Hembe studied Law at the Benue State University, where his records were splodged by allegations of active involvement in cultism. His father, a professor at the same university, was known to have publicly expressed helplessness in curtailing the truancy of Herman and his other brother, Orkuma, who attended but never graduated from the University of Agriculture, Markurdi, also Benue State.
So, how did an alleged cultist find his way to the National Assembly? Herman’s brother, Orkuma Hembe, had been president of the once-cerebral but since-decrepit National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) in 2005, developing a cunning reputation for attempting to perpetuate himself in office beyond the limit of his term. Orkuma was the anointed candidate of then president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo; and when both men reluctantly vacated their offices, the unholy alliance blossomed. Once during Obasanjo’s tenure, Orkuma is reported to have told the Vice Chancellor of his University that after the president of the country, his Vice, and the senate president, he was the next most powerful Nigerian!
Such was the might of young Orkuma’s presidential connections that his brother, a relatively unknown Herman, was easily the president’s preference when he showed up from nowhere to contest the 2007 primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the right to represent the Jechira Federal Constituency — a fusion of Vandeikya and Konshisha — at the Federal House of Representatives.
Orkuma reportedly stormed the venue of the congress with a car stuffed with cash (having reportedly received a donation from Obasanjo in the region of N10 million), and the least paid voter earned N10,000. The slogan on the day of the congress then was, “Vote for Hembe because you will have “‘transport money’ to return home.” Herman predictably emerged winner of the primaries; and with the all-conquering PDP rigging machinery, he was seeing himself in the House even before the general (s)election was decided. By April 2011 ,Hembe was all too familiar with the best means of returning to the House! Not exactly a proud record to behold, it must be said.
Arunma Oteh, on the other hand, studied Computer Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where she graduated with first class honours; and proceeded to the Harvard Business School, where she obtained a Masters in Business Administration. Joining the African Development Bank in 1992, she rose through the ranks to become the Vice President (Corporate Management) in 2006.
Until the return of Oteh (who had lived abroad for the better part of her life) to the country in 2009 after her nomination by late President Musa Yar’Adua to head SEC, there was yet no documented or insinuated case of corruption or any other form of misdemeanour against her person. So, dismissing the documents currently flying around and adopting a position based on antecedents of the two, Herman Hembe is the likelier candidate for thorough investigation in the N44 million bribery scandal.
As it is, Hembe has quite a case on his hands. His only consolation is that he won’t drown alone, as he will have the unpalatable company of Oteh. It was all clear from the start that Hembe was unclean. If he truly is the man of honour he has been masquerading to be and SEC indeed offered him an unsolicited bribe, whatever held him back from mentioning it when the allegation was made at the March 15 hearing must be psychic. If he was indeed offered the bribe and Oteh had only resorted to cheap blackmail, what stopped him from immediately reminding Oteh that she was the original originator the bribe? Why did Hon. Hembe wait another five days until March 20 before announcing that he “fought hard” and “rebuffed” Oteh’s bribe? Why did it take him five whopping days to tell the world of his possession of “documentary evidence” to support his claims?
While Hembe’s House Committee is undoubtedly corrupt, it has an up-and-coming ally and follower in Arunma Oteh’s Securities and Exchange Commission. When SEC on Wednesday, March 21, released the documents proving first contact from the Committee, it must have thought it nailed the Committee. Yes, it did. And yes, it got itself incriminated, in addition.
In the first instance, why in the world would an agency under probe accept to defray the cost of the exercise by approving N30 million for the probers? If Oteh’s SEC was unsoiled, as expected of a regulatory agency, did it need to render financial support to the Committee? No controversies: SEC was all out to mask certain internal irregularities that the probe would have unveiled.
In the first of SEC’s published internal memos, Hassan Mamman had written that the Commission was in receipt of a “letter of invitation” from the Committee to the hearing; not that it had received a “letter of financial assistance.” Mr. Mamman needs to explain what the hurry to “assist” the Committee with funds was all about.
“In view of the Commission’s role as the apex regulator of the Nigerian Capital Market and in consideration of the existing cordial relationship cultivated over the years between it and the Committee…, we find it appropriate for the management to assist the Committee by co-sponsoring this three weeks long event,” he had also written. By years of cordial relationship, could Mamman be literally referring to years of secretly doling millions to the Committee?
He had further written: “It is our considered opinion that doing this will be of immense benefit to the nation’s Capital Market by further creating more conducive atmosphere to finding lasting solutions to the challenges facing the Nigerian Capital Market.” The link between the “doing this” and the “conducive atmosphere to finding lasting solutions…” is one more anomaly Mamman will need to regularise. Two similar memos were written on March 9 and March 13. And all three memos, Madam Oteh saw, and even minuted on!
Clearly, Oteh has no one but herself to blame for the splotch of the scandal to her flagging reputation as well as her much vaunted 25-year international career. Her tacit endorsement of those internal memos is testament to the avalanche of financial recklessness within SEC she must have overlooked. The alluring temptation for anyone who has read the memos is to brand Madam Oteh guilty of all allegations levelled against her by the Committee, particularly blowing a princely N30 million on accommodation at Transcorp Hilton in eight months (7months more than her legally allowed period of stay) while simultaneously receiving the financial entitlements due an un-accommodated DG.
Two familiar lessons the mortifying drama has taught the country: all public pontifications by Senate and House Committees about sanitising so and so sectors with some rigorous probes is mere tokenism, and the actual probes and hearings are simply money-making, buying-and-selling business ventures for the legislature. Only God knows what must have happened with the Senate Committee that so sanctimoniously trumpeted its meticulous probe of the fraudulent management of pension funds by the Police Pension Board. Only God knows how many ‘Ghana-must-go’ bags of cash exchanged hands between the Board and the Committee for an ‘amicable resolution’ of the fraud.
Second is that we can tell with an irrefutable degree of certainty that the SEC and the House Committee are birds of a corrupt feather! Summary of the mess is, a corrupt Committee attempted to probe a corrupt Commission, a gang of armed robbers attempted to police a bunch of thieves; and the allegations and counter-accusations have effectively putting paid to the need for a public hearing. The EFCC has been invited over. Hopefully, the EFCC will appropriately and dispassionately probe both the Commission and the Committee. And hopefully, yet again, none of the two will accuse the new prober of charges similar to what we have been regaled with all week!
