$10 BILLION P&ID FRAUD : FORMER LAGOS JUSTICE COMMISSIONER SUPO SHASORE NAILS IN UK COURT

Mr Supo Shasore, the former justice commissioner in Lagos State was the first lawyer Nigeria hired to defend its interest against the monstrous and fraudulent claim of almost $10billion made by Irish company P&ID.

But as it turned out, he betrayed Nigeria’s trust and let down his nation by allowing himself to be corrupted by P&ID and in turn, he also corrupted some public officials working for NNPC and the Ministry of Petroleum, with bribes totalling $200,000.

Sir Ross Cranston of the UK High Court of Justice Queen’s Bench Division Commercial Court put Shasore’s conduct under scrutiny in the judgment delivered today.

He concluded Shasore was compromised by the guys in P&ID.

According to the judgment read by Cranston, Nigeria’s lawyer, Mr Howard accused Shasore for deliberately defending the case thinly, at the first two stages of the arbitration, such that the Tribunal had no choice but to find for P&ID. 

“The reason was that he had colluded with P&ID, with the inevitable result that Nigeria would lose the case”, Howard said.

”In advancing his case, Mr Howard pointed to various factors: Mr Shasore had advised a speedy settlement, as in his 17 July 2013 letter to the then Attorney General, without investigating the obvious line of defence that P&ID, a BVI company with no experience, assets or finance, would not perform. 

“Next, Mr Shasore concealed his involvement from his own firm.

“Further, in the conduct of the arbitration he did not seek disclosure of any of the 100 files Mr Quinn referred to in his statement, relevant to the preparatory work P&ID was said to have performed. 

“Finally, there was no useful evidence on the Nigerian side in Mr Oguine’s witness statement, which he drafted.

“It was significant, Mr Howard submitted, that in the arbitration proceedings Mr Shasore failed to challenge Mr Quinn’s evidence of P&ID’s ability and willingness to perform the contract and the US$40 million said to have been expended.

“His attempt at cross- examination of Mr Quinn was bound to fail when he had not challenged anything significant in Mr Quinn’s statement, the issue of cross-examination was foreclosed at the case management hearing in which he participated, and Mr Quinn was dead (which he claimed not to know).

“Then there were Mr Shasore’s reply submissions, added Mr Howard, where he wrongly asserted that his statement of disputed facts essentially challenged all the facts in Mr Quinn’s statement.

“Additionally, Mr Shasore dragged his feet when conduct of the arbitration was transferred from the Ministry to the Attorney General for the quantum stage. At the quantum stage, Mr Howard submitted, Nigeria’s new counsel, Mr Ayorinde, was precluded from reopening the matter.

“Not only did he not know of Mr Shasore’s behaviour, he had no basis to apply to reopen the Tribunal’s prior findings”, Howard concluded.

P&ID’s lawyer, Mr Mill defended Shasore and submitted that it simply could not be said that this was a fabricated dispute, and Nigeria did not treat it as such.

“Through Mr Shasore Nigeria advanced what would have been a knock-out blow with its challenge on jurisdiction with an argument which even the Attorney General, Mr Malami, thought was a good one.

“That was entirely inconsistent with the suggestion, said Mr Mill, that Mr Shasore was somehow conspiring with P&ID and putting up a sham defence for the sake of appearances.

“There was no evidence, submitted Mr Mill, to support Mr Howard’s speculation that Mr Shasore might have been corrupted, if not from the outset of the arbitration, certainly after the Jurisdiction Award.

“The reality was, Mr Mill contended, that this was a genuine dispute which, given the language of the GSPA, Nigeria was hard-pressed to defend, but which it fought over a number of years from its inception in August 2012 until the Final Award in January 2017. Mr Shasore’s conduct, and the Nigerian defence generally, were inconsistent with a deliberate plan to lose the case.

” As to the liability hearing, submitted Mr Mill, Mr Shasore tried his hardest – having misapprehended the implications of Procedural Order No. 9, and the discussion at the case management conference – to get himself out of a hole. By reference to the transcript and the Tribunal’s reasons, Mr Mill also submitted that there was nothing to prevent Mr Ayorinde from reopening the matter at the quantum stage of the arbitration.

But Sir Ross Cranston, after reviewing the case against Shasore concluded:

“At one level I can see that in Mr Shasore’s favour it might be said that he did the best he could in circumstances where he had a difficult case and, at least for part of the time, faced a lack of instructions from the Ministry (as I have mentioned above). Albeit he did not seek discovery, he did advance the jurisdiction argument, and at the liability stage identified at short notice six facts in Mr Quinn’s statement which Nigeria wished to dispute (albeit that P&ID did not need to rely on them).

“Moreover, it might be said that Mr Shasore took a number of points on liability, although the Tribunal dismissed them without too much difficulty.

 Whatever the cause it seemed to follow as a matter of course that at both the liability and quantum stage the Tribunal would accept Mr Quinn’s evidence as to the willingness and ability of P&ID to perform its part of the GSPA. As Mr Mill put it, Mr Shasore faced the timeless problem of advocates dealt a poor hand and making the best they could.

“However, what persuades me of a prima facie case of dishonesty in Mr Shasore’s conduct of the arbitration are his payments of US$100,000 each to Ms Adelore and Mr Oguine. Ms Adelore occupied Ms Taiga’s position at the Ministry as the senior lawyer, and Mr Oguine was her counterpart at the NNPC. Their salaries as public servants, according to the Attorney General, Mr Malami, were some US$5000 per annum.

“Mr Mill submitted that these payments had nothing to do with P&ID. Moreover, Mr Shasore had volunteered the information about them to the EFCC and described them as gifts.

“The argument that Mr Shasore volunteered the payments goes nowhere, since once the EFCC had information from the bank accounts it was difficult to deny them. As to Mr Shasore’s account that these were gifts, that does not seem to me a complete and honest explanation for why he should make these payments to these senior public servants.

“Part of the picture is that after the payment to Ms Adelore, she wrote to the Ministry’s permanent secretary on 30 December 2014 recommending a settlement. We also saw that when the EFCC investigated in the first part of 2016, she was the source of information at the Ministry. I have also mentioned that Mr Oguine was charged with producing witnesses for Nigeria but instead put his name to a witness statement in May 2015 which the Tribunal said was of no assistance to its case. Moreover, with Mr Shasore, Ms Adelore and Mr Oguine comprised Nigeria’s settlement team in late 2014.

“In the result there is a possibility that Mr Shasore had been corrupted. At the least I accept Mr Howard’s submission that there is a prima facie case that Mr Shasore made the payments to Ms Adelore and Mr Oguine to purchase their silence in relation to his conduct of the arbitration and settlement negotiations. There is therefore a prima facie case that the arbitration proceedings were tainted.

” At the point of the Jurisdiction and Liability Awards the position was compounded if, as Mr Howard submits, Nigeria’s counsel, Mr Shasore, had been corrupted. Even if Mr Shasore had not been corrupted, I accept Mr Howard’s submission that Mr Shasore could not reasonably have been expected to discover if, as seems to be the case, that the GSPA was procured by bribes, and that P&ID’s plan from the outset was to extract money from Nigeria through contrived settlement negotiations or arbitration.

“When Mr Shasore was replaced for the quantum hearing and Final Award, I also accept Mr Howard’s submission that Nigeria’s new counsel, Mr Ayorinde would have no reason to suppose that Mr Quinn’s evidence to the Tribunal had been perjured, that P&ID was not a legitimate business which was ready and able to perform the GSPA, or that Mr Shasore was implicated in illegitimate payments to senior civil servants acting with him.

“Mr Ayorinde’s conduct of the arbitration in this regard is explicable”.

 

PROSPERITY PASTORS MAKES AFRICANS POORER WHILE ENRICHED THEMSELVES~~GIOtv

GIOtv wrote,Our so call(ed) prosperity pastors preaching has increases the poverty level in Africa with their 'Sakamaje' messages . According to GIOtv,"Their prosperity preaching only enriched (their pockets) themselves and their cohorts  ....(they advised Africans to) Wake up from spiritual slavery .

 

POLITICS OF 'JEUN S'OKE' AS AKEREDOLU PRESENTED CARS TO LAWMAKERS LOYAL TO HIS GOVERNMENT

 Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State has presented SUV to members of the state’s House of Assembly especially those loyal to his government.

According to SaharaReporters,Akeredolu handed out the car gifts to the lawmakers on Friday in order to further enjoy their loyalty ahead of the election next month.

The governor, however, ignored lawmakers not loyal to him in the latest spending of state resources for personal goal.

The lawmakers ignored were those, who kicked against a plot to impeach deputy governor of the state, Agboola Ajayi, last month.

Presenting the vehicles to the Assembly members, Akeredolu said he had been able to fulfill his promises to them.

He said, “We have been on this car issue for a while and luckily it came today. Nobody is doing it for political reasons. This is an improvement on what we had last.”

Speaker of the House of Assembly, Bamidele Oloyegun, who received the vehicles on behalf of members, said they were ready to perform their legislative duties optimally.

COVID-19: RUSSIAN VACCINE NOT YET IN NIGERIA~~MAMORA

The Minister of State for Health, Dr. Olorunnimbe Mamora, has stated that the Russian vaccine for COVID-19 is not yet in Nigeria.

Speaking to newsmen, the minister said;

“We have not yet received the vaccine and, to the best of my knowledge, it is not yet ready. The Russian Ambassador and the Deputy Head of Mission only visited us to give us an update.

Many other stakeholders joined the meeting virtually.When the vaccine is ready and we have received it, it will be subjected to the usual test by NAFDAC and other relevant authorities.”

An earlier report on Friday September 4, stated that the vaccine was formally handed over to Nigeria on Friday which the minister an debunked.

 

INCOMING INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS TO CARRY 200 PASSENGERS

The Director-general/CEO of NCAA Musa Nuhu in a memo released on Friday September 4,  disclosed that International flights coming into Nigeria have been directed to carry a maximum of 200 passengers,and there is no limit on the number of outgoing passengers.  

It read; 

“Following the announcement by the presidential task force (PTF) on COVID-19 on the partial resumption of international flights effective September 5, 2020.

“Kindly note due to the limited number of approved incoming passengers (1,280) allowed daily per each airport, it is not possible to accommodate the requested schedule of airlines.

“The approved schedule is based on a maximum number of 200 passengers per each incoming flight to Nigeria. There is no limit on the number of outgoing passengers.

“Each operator has only one frequency on an approved day of operation irrespective of the capacity of aircraft utilised.”

 

Here is the flight schedule below; 

 

"IF NIGERIANS IN GHANA ARE DOING LEGITIMATE BUSINESS ALLOW THEM" ~~GBAJABIAMILA ADVISED GHANAIAN COUNTERPART

 Alan Kyerematen, Ghana Minister of Trade and Industry,has asked the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Femi Gbajabiamila, to instruct his compatriots doing business in Ghana to respect Ghana’s trade laws.

He said these during a ‘Legislative Diplomacy’ bilateral meeting the Nigerian Speaker had with Ghanaian lawmakers and some top government officials in Accra on Thursday September 3.

He said “The incidence that has occurred where some shops were locked up must have risen out of situations where there were clear abuses of the application of the laws.

“I was happy that the Nigerian Speaker of the House of Representatives mentioned that if they are doing legitimate business, please allow them as brothers and sisters to continue to do so. I want to give you that assurance that that will be the case. Anybody engaged in business, trading, doing the rightful things, they must have no difficulties.

“Even in cases where we found that in some instances where the laws were not being followed, I, in my capacity as the Minister of Trade, had ordered that they shut the office and those who are being seen as offending the law be given an opportunity to regularise their documentation.

“I say this, being the Minister of Trade and Industry, this is not something that is new, I have always since the time I’ve been a Minister found a way of going along, so that those who needed to regularise their businesses would do so. “Also, as indicated by the Speaker, that it will be a desire to see whether certain aspects of the law could be looked at, I’m sure the Speaker will look at that request and appropriate Committees would be engaged on the subject.

“As long as the laws remain on our statute books, I will like to request that, you send a strong signal to our brothers and sisters who are engaged in retail trading that at least for now until further considerations are made on our statute books, they should just respect the law because Ghanaian traders themselves are required to respect the laws of our country. And in that sense, it will be discriminatory for us to require Ghanaians to respect the same laws in our statute books and not require foreigners to do so.”

The Speaker also said he would be glad to champion a law to improve the bilateral trade relations between Nigeria and Ghana, noting that citizens of the two countries remain brothers and sisters. He called on Ghanaian authorities to revisit the component of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) law that requires a capital base of $1 million for businesses to start, saying as Africans, Ghana should encourage brotherliness.

“Firstly, amicable settlement of trade disputes through arbitration and fair judicial processes. In this context, we do believe that while it is the sovereign right of the government of Ghana to pass and implement the GIPC Act, we would implore you to explore alternative and less aggressive options of engaging, sanctioning and relating with our traders and business people who operate in your country, pay taxes and contribute to the development of both our nations.

“Secondly, we would encourage you to revisit the component of the law that requires a capital base of $1,000,000. We are all Africans, we all have towns and villages, and we know only too well that majority of our traders across the continent are petty traders. The prospect of them being able to raise a capital base of $1,000,000 before they can trade in goods that may be worth less than $1,000, clearly is a major challenge.

“Thirdly, one of the things we are all proud about and the common surname that we all bear is ‘ECOWAS’ and as you know, by virtue of being ECOWAS countries, our nations and our citizens should be able to live, work and thrive in any of our nations without any form of hindrance or discrimination.

“It is in this light we would encourage that we explore how the principles and the application of ECOWAS protocols – which we are both signatories to – may perhaps conflict with the application of the GIPC Act, especially vis-à-vis the recent adoption of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACfTA) by African nations; and also the movement towards a single currency in the West African subregion.

“Fourth, is the importance of strengthening legislative diplomacy and collaboration. Legislative diplomacy is a tool that has been used across the world – both in developing and developed nations – to negotiate, to arbitrate and to find peaceful resolution to disputes between nations. Legislative diplomacy is akin to back-channel diplomacy, which in many cases, makes it more possible for countries to debate and find solutions to problems, without any country losing face publicly.

“In this regard, I do believe that this step both our parliaments have taken to sit, to discuss, deliberate and find solutions; is a sterling example of legislative diplomacy, which the rest of the continent can follow to ensure that while the executive arm of government is performing its duties, that we in the legislature can also leverage our knowledge, our experience, the relationships we have amongst ourselves, to complement efforts in finding collective solutions to our shared problems.

“Fifthly, like I said right from the beginning, Nigeria and Ghana are siblings from the same family. I, for one, would be willing to champion a law that helps to improve the bilateral trade relations and reciprocal legislation between our two countries and in this regard, we would like to explore the possibility of jointly passing what we could potentially call a Nigeria-Ghana Friendship Act – or something in that line, which will help to cement into law the good relations between our countries and also create a legal framework for further camaraderie that will enable us to ensure that, when it comes to Nigeria and Ghana, our laws will support efforts to improve relations, trade and positive and friendly interactions between our citizens, institutions and our governments.

“We do not have an exact title for such a law as at now, but agreeing on reciprocal legislation that cements the friendship between our nations; and ensures that it continues to thrive and benefit all our citizens – no matter where they live – would go a long way in strengthening our relations on all levels,” Mr Gbajabiamila said.

Noting that the relationship between Nigeria and Ghana is one of the most important in Africa, Mr Gbajabiamila said at a time the world is battling the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic impacts and the pressures on public coffers “and service delivery systems are weighing heavily on us all, it is clear that this is not a time for conflict and disagreements, but a time for partnership and solidarity.”

 SOURCE :GHANA WEB

GUNNEN KIDNAP SARKIN FULANI OF ILORIN

Some unknown gunmen  on Thursday September 3 at about 8:00am around the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital in Ilorin, kidnapped the Sarkin Fulani of Ilorin, Usman Adamu Hardo. 

 

The Sarkin Fulani was reportedly on his way to the bank in his car with his son Babangida, when some gunmen barricaded their way in a vehicle.

 

An eyewitness told Daily Trust; 

 

“They asked him to come out from his own vehicle and join them, I learned that he was carrying some cash to bank when they kidnapped him.

“His car was later recovered with his phone inside, it was right now with the police."

 

Usman's wife, Hajiya Aina’u Usaman who confirmed his abduction said the kidnappers wore kaftan and spoke hausa. 

 

She said;

 

“They did not go with Babangida (his son). He has come back home.

“He told us that it was three of the gunmen that came out of their vehicle and forced my husband to join them in their car.

“He pleaded with them to collect the money with him and set him free, but they refused, telling him that they have been looking for him for so long.

“They spoke Hausa language with their faces covered and they were wearing kaftan."

 

She also disclosed that her husband is battling some undisclosed health challenges and urged for his rescue.