Hon. Cairo Ojougbo was a National Assembly lawmaker and self-confessed anti-corruption crusader. In this interview with BODE OLAGOKE, he exposes what he calls fraud in the execution of the Centenary City project in Abuja and calls for proper investigation
What is your reaction to some of the things the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation [SGF], Chief Anyim Pius Anyim, said concerning the controversy surrounding the Centenary City project? May be we have to start from where he said he had no hand in it.
He had plenty hands in it. Anyim is the owner of the Centenary City. What Anyim did was to incorporate the Centenary City, with two off the shelf companies-Basic Start and Company First. These two companies have 125 million shares each. So that is 250 million shares out of the one billion shares of the Centenary City. The remaining, Anyim would have for himself, in the name of Mulak Ventures Ltd. and another company called Precious Integrated. That is how Anyim came to own the entire Centenary City. Anyim duped government. There was a military base where the Centenary City is supposed to be today. That military base was transferred at the cost of N2billion. Federal Government paid.
Paid to who?
Government paid for the relocation of the military base. The Federal Government paid to the Ministry of Defence. Anyim was supposed to pay N6 billion for the Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) for the Centenary City. He did not pay. He was given a waiver. Anyim has paid for everything concerning the Centenary City, from his private account of Mulak Ventures. Anyim issued the Centenary City License, through the M/D (Managing Director) of NEPZA, without the knowledge of the Board.
For you to have a free zone, you will register the land and get the C of O and give it to NEPZA. Ask Anyim where the Certificate of Occupancy of the Centenary City is.
It is in the Bank Vault where Anyim used it to obtain loan. Application for the Centenary City as a free zone, the Board never knew of it, the Board never saw it. Nigerians in fact, did not know that the Centenary City was a free zone until we received a petition from Dino Melaye, who informed us that the Centenary City was a free zone.
We asked the MD and he said, if we want any answer, we should go and ask Anyim. We went to Anyim and he said well, it has been licensed, that it is within his power as SGF to order that the license be given. We now said no, you don’t have that power. We told him that this will cost Nigeria massively.
We will lose three million jobs. We will lose investments, our industries will die, cement will be imported into the country free of charge, common manual laborers will and everybody will come into the country free of charge if that place is licensed as a free zone. I never asked Anyim for one penny. I never had a meeting with him, I never asked anybody to go and negotiate with him.
If Anyim said I asked him for money, he should have proof. Everything I am telling so, I have proof.The Immediate , past Minister for Justice and Attorney-General of the FederationAdoke, wrote a letter to the then President, telling him that it is illegal for the Centenary City to be a free zone. What else do you want me to do?I have a document
where Ayim , in his office, got approval for a N9billion contract for Ecological fund contract.Two days later, Anyim increased it, from N9billion to N12billion. The difference of N3 billion was paid to Anyim. That was what Anyim paid to Mulak Ventures. That is how Mulak Ventures has been financing the Centenary City.
There is no N8billion investment coming from anybody. The Alaba that he is talking about has not brought in one penny. Ask the Central Bank. There is no one penny of foreign investment that has come. All that Anyim is using is the proceeds of loot from his office. He looted the Ecological Fund, he looted the NDDC. Anyim awarded his own company, Precious Integrated Services, contract for N1.4 billion, for software in his office. It is in the Senate Report, presented by Senator Abaribe.
This Ecological Fund you are talking about, where was it meant for?
It was meant for a dam and erosion control, fictitious erosion control in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The documents are there. And I have told the Government of Buhari that the biggest scam this country has ever seen is the Centenary City.
Is the M/D of NEPZA not an accomplice in this scam as you call it?
We have always said so. We have told the Federal Government, in our petition we have written, the M/D of NEPZA should be asked to produce the approval that the Board gave him to license the Free Zone. If he cannot, then he too should be tried for criminal breach of trust.
Anyim has also accused you of fighting him because you were removed as the Chairman of NEPZA?
Why was I removed as Chairman of NEPZA? It was because I told him that it was illegal. If I were a criminal, will he remove me from Chairman of NEPZA and post me to another Board? No.
He sent me to another because he knew I was telling him the truth. He knew he could not corrupt me because he knows I am a soldier of truth. Apart from being a Catholic, the only other association I belong in this World is that I am a soldier of truth. And as a member of soldiers of truth, the only thing that makes us happy, is when you are able to speak the truth when you are placed in a position of trust.
Were you and Anyim friends ever before?
Of course we were friends to some reasonable extent.
So, at what point did you disagree?
At the point when I told him that what he was doing in the Centenary City, is a crime. I told him it is a crime and that was how we disagreed. I told him straight away that it was a crime and that it shouldn’t continue. People know me, they know I don’t compromise. So when I refused to compromise, the Minister, Aganga, called me and said, look, if you don’t leave this matter, if you don’t allow it to go, then you have to go. I said yes sir, I will go. I will go with my conscience. So they sent me to another Board. I told them that well, you can send me to another Board but that will not cover the truth.
But didn’t the former President know that they were going to reassign you?
Anyim wrote a very nasty report to the former President. And the former President signed. So I went to him and said, sir, this is copy of the memo Anyim sent to you, with which they removed me. He looked at it and said he didn’t even know I was the one involved.
He didn’t read it?
He didn’t know I was the one involved because you know there was tension and all that during the election. I am not defending him but I am telling you the truth but knowing my President, because he remains my President, Jonathan remains my President, you know he is an honest gentleman. He made an honest mistake, there is no doubt about that. And that is exactly what happened in this issue of Centenary City. He made an honest mistake. That is the truth.
Anyim also accused you of being used by the immediate past Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Senator Bala Mohammed, to fight him.
How can Bala use me? Bala told him to go and read Council memo, it is clear, that you cannot have centenary City here as a free zone. The Constitution is very clear. There are 774 local governments in the country. All of them are in the constitution.
FCT has six. For you to make this Centenary City in FCT a free zone, you must change the constitution. It is not in the Abuja Master Plan.
In fact, he wrote a letter to the Minister for FCT, to allow him to issue Certificate of Occupancy [C of O], So they now told him, look, in a free zone, you cannot sell land. So any person buying land or buying houses in the Centenary City is wasting his time because as long as it is a free zone, you can only rent, a maximum of five years, renewable every five years. And there is no guarantee that the next five years, you are going to get it again. The law is very clear. So if you go and buy land now or buy property in the Centenary City, you are wasting your time, you have lost your money.
Dose the law equally permit the SGF to issue C of O?
The law does not. So that was the reason, when Bala said he could not allow him to issue Certificate of Occupancy, they quarreled. Just like NEPZA Board disagreed with him, the Attorney-General disagreed with him, the FCT Minister disagreed with him, and even Aganga himself disagreed with him. Aganga told me that his hands were tied. He agreed that the place cannot be a free zone, Aganga told me. He came and apologised to me.
He said his hands were tired by who?
Anyim was very powerful. He was a colossus, he was a demagogue. Anyim as SGF, was so big, he was bigger than life. You know he is very bulky. You know the mass of protoplasm. His greed is bigger than his mass. Anyim’s greed is bigger than his mass. Look at Anyim, I am older than him, I say he doesn’t know his age. You know everything about him is fraud. He claims to be 50. I am 55. How can Anyim be 50? He claims I am older than him. So I say Anyim doesn’t know his age. He went to school late, he didn’t go to school as and when due. I graduated as a medical Doctor at the age of 24. At 24, Anyim had not entered the university. Look at the university he went to, can you compare it to the university we went to? We know how he got his law degree. How did he get it? Go and investigate it. This country cannot continue like this.
So, what is your next line of action in this controversy?
I have finished. I have told Nigerians. I have spoken, I have written to the President, I have written to security agents- If President Buhari said he wants to fight corruption, then he must investigate this fraud. If he doesn’t investigate it, that means he is encouraging corruption and in fact the whole world will hear it.
