- Suspected $9.8m loot: Let ex-NNPC boss Yakubu have his day in court
Between 1979 when he entered the oil industry after taking a degree in chemical engineering at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and 2014, when he was forced to quit, Andrew Yakubu enjoyed a reputation as one of the most accomplished executives in the business.
His expertise and leadership in all facets of the industry –engineering, exploration, refining and operations — culminated in his appointment as Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), arguably the most coveted position in the industry, and the most visible.
He was dismissed just two years later in controversial circumstances by former President Goodluck Jonathan. Since then, he had been living a quiet life out of the public view until he hit the front pages and the headlines last week, in the most dramatic manner and for the most unsavoury of reasons.
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) announced that they found $9.8 million and £74,000 neatly stashed in a fireproof safe in a house Yakubu owns in a seedy neighbourhood in the Kaduna State capital, Kaduna.
The building is reported to be in such disrepair that no one would suspect that it harboured a sum of money that staggers the imagination. Pictures of what is by any reckoning a fortune have since gone viral, with some media units placing Yakubu’s picture right beside the tantalising pile.
The EFCC says it regards the money as proceeds of crime. Yakubu says it is nothing of the sort. The money belongs to him and it is clean money, comprising cash gifts he had received over the years, he has insisted. A Federal High court has ordered that the money be forfeited to the EFCC. Meanwhile, Yakubu is on administrative bail, pending arraignment.
Whether a crime was involved or not in the acquisition of such a vast sum of money by a public official in the course of his duties is a matter for the courts. At this point, it is prejudicial to describe the money as loot. Yakubu deserves the presumption of innocence the law accords every suspect.
Nevertheless, some questions need to be asked, without prejudice to his right to that presumption.
What was the occasion for each gift? Who were the donors? Were the gifts contingent on performing certain acts or on desisting from performing them? Were they inducement to render special favours, or rewards for favours rendered?
Were the gifts reported to the appropriate authorities, or in income tax filings? Was acceptance of such gifts consistent with conduct expected of a public servant? Why was the money not deposited in the banking system? Finally, what was it about Yakubu that attracted so many gifts in hard currency?
Yakubu’s relations and friends in the Kataf community of Southern Kaduna are not helping him or themselves when they frame the matter in ethnic terms. They are claiming that the money in question was nothing more than his earnings, which he has a right to store anywhere he fancies.
More ominously they are putting the whole thing down as a conspiracy to sacrifice “our illustrious son “to the dogs” as a means of undercutting their leaders ahead of the 2019 general elections. The implication is that Yakubu has been building a political war chest.
That is not a crime. But they should stop second-guessing him. It may well be that he has a far more compelling reason for his vast accumulation. They should let him have his day in court.
This matter is not without a touch of schadenfreude. Following the EFCC’s raid, residents of the neighbourhood reportedly trooped out in celebration, raining curses on Yakubu for stashing so much money away under cover of the grinding poverty all around him, with nary a thought of alleviating it.
There is a lesson in this for our ravenous political officials, a distillation of the wisdom of our forbears: Those who eat alone stand to fight alone.
