On Sunday, officials were called to a street
in Ikorodu Lagos after two weeks of foul
and unpleasant smell.
Residents of Atele street in Anibaba area of
Ikorodu say at least 6 decomposing bodies
of young ladies were removed from a
carnal on Sunday by the officials of Lagos
State Environmental Health Monitoring
Team SEHMU.
In the last 6 months, kidnappers had
besieged Ikorodu after which several cases
of attempted kidnap, arrest and missing
persons were reported to the police.On
November 30, 2015, the body of an
unidentified student was found at a carnal
in Ota Ona area of Ikorodu with several
missing body parts.
SEHMU officials urged residents to be
vigilant.
It has long been established that a
subordinate has no legal obligation to obey
illegal orders from his/her superior.
This point is important as we examine the
recent nauseating revelations about the
huge sums of money that the former
finance minister, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
and Central Bank governor, Godwin
Emefiele, made available to the now
arrested former National Security Adviser,
Sambo Dasuki.
Few days ago, Okonjo-Iweala admitted
giving Sambo Dasuki the sum of $322m on
the orders of former President Goodluck
Jonathan. Before that the same Okonjo-
Iweala admitted spending $2bn from the
Excess Crude Oil account on the orders of
the former President.
The Central Bank of Nigeria under Godwin
Emefiele has admitted giving Sambo Dasuki
billions of Naira and dollars on the orders
of the former president.
A good part of these monies were given to
Sambo Dasuki in cash in clear
contravention of existing anti-money
laundering laws by the country’s chief
banker. Let us put the money laundering
issue to the side for now.
The problem with the orders from the
former President to the then finance
minister and current CBN governor is that
they were illegal.
Neither the President nor any other
government official in Nigeria has the legal
authority to order the spending of funds
that have not been appropriated by the
National Assembly! Both subordinates
knew or ought to know that the orders
they were obeying were illegal and should
have refused to comply.
Resignation was an option. Between these
two subordinates they cost the nation in
excess of $5B by obeying the referenced
illegal orders. That is just what we know so
far and this kind of behavior is going on at
every level of government everyday.
The arrest and prosecution of Okonjo-
Iweala and Godwin Emediefe will send out
the message that “the president ordered the
payment” is not a defense known to the
laws of Nigeria.
Their prosecution is imperative in light of
the fact that a lot of the money being stolen
in the country is not in the custody of the
people stealing them. They rely on a group
of people that I call facilitators in an
upcoming article to get access to public
funds in the custody of the facilittors.
In almost every case of monies made
available to Sambo Dasuki, all those
making the money available were
following illegal orders and they knew it.
The time has come for Buhari to beam the
searchlight on this group of people.
The commercial bankers who allow
government officials to come into their
banks and withdraw millions and billions
in cash in apparent violation of anti-money
laundering laws are facilitators of
corruption because they know the funds
are dirty hence the need to terminate the
paper trail through cash withdrawal. The
bankers ought to be in jail too partly
because they make tracing these funds
more complicated.
To understand the importance of
subordinates not obeying illegal orders,
imagine that Okonjo-Iweala, NNPC and
Godwin Emefiele refused to obey the
former President’s illegal orders and
resigned under pressure and spilled the
beans.
With Nigerians fully aware of the
attempted fraud it would have been
difficult for their replacements to obey the
same illegal orders.
Buhari’s anti-corruption war must involve
establishing a culture that encourages civil
servants, and bank employees to disobey
illegal orders.
This will prevent our money from leaving
the treasury rather than chasing after the
money after it has been stolen.
Before closing I will like to remind people
that a majority of the civilians and military
officers who were tried, executed or jailed
by the post-World War 2 Nuremberg Trials
courts in Germany were obeying orders
from Adolf Hitler.
The problem was that Adolf Hitler had no
legal basis for issuing the orders and those
who ended up being executed for obeying
the orders had no obligation to obey the
orders.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Godwin Emefiele
should be familiar with the Nuremberg
Trials. The lesson is that a superior cannot
order a subordinate to do anything that the
superior has no authority to do himself/
herself.
Malam Mohammed Sani Abdulrahaman, his wife, Shefinat,
and two children were said to have been trapped in their
one bed-room apartment after power surge in their
apartment around 2.30 a.m that caused a fire outbreak in
their residence.
Governor Abubakar Sani Bello, in a condolence message,
described the incident as unfortunate, especially with the
loss of 7-year-old Mohammed Nafir and his two-year-old
sister.
After the incident, in a message signed by the Chief Press
Secretary, Jibrin Baba Ndace, the governor promised that his
administration will revamp the state Fire Service in order to
make it more efficient.
Two people died on the spot in a fatal accident at the Iyana-
Itire junction along the Oshodi-Apapa expressway Lagos this
morning. According to eyewitnesses, the two cars involved
in the accident were about to go help another accident
victim when a trailer ran into them killing two people. One
person actually came out alive. The photos are very graphic.
*viewer discretion advised*
In an exclusive interview with BBC London's home affairs
correspondent Nick Beake on Wednesday, December 9, the
Nigerian man held as slave for 25 years, Ofonime Sunday
Inuk revealed that he reported his captors (Dr Edet and his
wife) 15 years ago (2004) only for police to say they could
not help him as it was a "family matter,"
Now, the force say it was "really regrettable" it had missed
earlier opportunities to help Mr Inuk.
Det Chief Inspector, Phil Brewer of the Met Police trafficking
and kidnapping unit said:
"It's really regrettable that that happened."
He said the Met now worked with many organisations and
local authorities to help prevent similar scenarios occurring
where "people are not listened to or not believed."
Inuk, who is now 40 said:
"I was so happy, thinking it would change my life, but I
was just a person's property," he told Nick Beake.
"I wanted to commit suicide, I couldn't bear it."
After 15 years he reported his intolerable situation to the
police.
"They didn't help me"
"They told me that if I wanted to report them [his captors]
they would have to come to the house. The Edets would
have turned me out and I would have got myself in trouble."
When he told the police the Edets had confiscated his
passport, he said:
"They told me there was nothing they could do" because
it was a "family matter".
He was encouraged to seek help from the police a second
time in 2013 after hearing about a slavery case on the radio
and Met detectives finally helped him to escape nine years
after he first contacted them.
