Fuel Subsidy Probe: Oil Biz Magnate, Femi Otedola Confirms Bribe to Lawmakers-THISDAY Newspaper

The full details of the $3 million bribery scandal involving members of the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on the Fuel Subsidy probe were revealed yesterday, as one of the major actors in the scandal has opened up on what transpired.

In an exclusive interview with “THISDAY”, chairman, Zenon Petroleum & Gas Ltd, Mr. Femi Otedola, who hitherto was suspected of being behind the $3 million bribery scandal, blew the lid on what transpired and how chairman of the ad-hoc committee, Hon. Farouk Lawan, and the secretary of the committee, Mr. Boniface Emenalo, had collected $620,000 from him in a sting operation masterminded by the security agencies.

The amount was part payment for the $3 million, which he alleged Lawan had demanded from him to exonerate Zenon Oil from the ad-hoc committee’s report.

As the scandal unfolds, it was learnt that operatives of the State Security Services have sent a video recording of the incident to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for further scrutiny and action.

Otedola, who was opening up on the issue for the first time, narrated how Lawan at the outset of the probe had approached him to get some insight into the workings of the downstream oil and gas sector.

Otedola said he obliged him and ensured that his managing directors of Forte Oil Plc and Zenon Oil appeared at the subsidy probe during its public hearing after both companies had been invited by the committee.

During the probe, he said the committee was informed in no uncertain terms that Zenon does not and has never made claims for subsidy payments from the federal government, as the company was engaged solely in the importation of diesel, a product that is not subsidised.

Zenon’s managing director, Mr. Kanmi Kareem Otaru, during the probe had denied that the company had anything to do with the subsidy regime. He told the committee, “For the avoidance of doubt Zenon never participated or benefited from the subsidy scheme or Petroleum Support Fund (PSF).”

According to him, going by the Act which established the PSF scheme, “Zenon couldn’t participate in it because we don’t have a network of PMS retail outlets which was one of the key criteria beneficiaries must meet and as such we are not qualified to participate to draw from subsidy payments on PMS. So we never collected as records will show.”

Irrespective of the clarification made at the hearing, Otedola said Lawan still approached him a few days before the report was to be tabled on April 18, 2012 before the House of Representatives, demanding money so that Zenon’s name will be kept out of the report.

“When this happened, I was very angry and reminded him that Zenon has never participated in the subsidy scheme and that it would be criminal to rope in the company for something it did not do.

“But Lawan responded, stating that several other marketers were playing ball and had offered the members of the committee large sums of money to ensure that their companies’ names were not published in the report,” he added.

Otedola, said initially he balked at Lawan’s attempt to extort money from him and told the legislator that he would not pay up, as Zenon had not committed any crime.

“Then a day before the report was to be submitted, Lawan called again, informing me that Zenon’s name had been included in the report.

“I, of course, was very angry and asked him to desist from his course of action, but Lawan insisted that I must pay up as other oil marketers had done before me.”

Otedola said he could not believe his eyes the next day when the report came out and Zenon’s name had been listed under the category of companies that had bought foreign exchange from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) but had not imported petrol.

The amount ascribed to Zenon in the report was $232,975,385.13. The report had recommended that Zenon and 14 other marketers that had bought the foreign exchange be referred to the anti-corruption agencies to determine what they used the monies for.

Otedola said at this point he again called Lawan demanding that Zenon’s name be removed from the list, as there was no way his company could have bought that volume of foreign exchange without importing products.

“I reminded him that the amount ascribed to Zenon was wrong as what the company bought was over $400 million for importation of products through the banks – Zenith, UBA and GTB – and that under Sanusi (CBN governor) there was no way anyone could have bought that quantity of foreign exchange and not imported the products having filled the Form M.

“Sanusi will simply clamp down on anyone who tries to pull that kind of stunt,” he said.

In spite of this, Otedola said Lawan still demanded that the members of the committee be given money in exchange for removing Zenon’s name from the report before it is considered in plenary by the entire House.

Otedola said he then asked how much would be required to make the committee happy, to which Lawan responded $3 million.

“I screamed at him, demanding to know why he was doing this to me. All he said was other marketers were paying up to keep their names out of the report so I should do likewise,” he said.

Otedola revealed that it was this point he decided to involve the security agencies to catch Lawan and his committee with their hands in the till.

According to him, “As a law-abiding citizen, I decided to involve the security agencies and they advised me to play along, which prompted me to offer to pay part of the money with the promise that I would pay the balance when my company’s name had been removed from the report."

The security agencies, he disclosed, gave him serialised dollar bills for the sting job and there are call logs, video and audio recordings in the possession of the agencies to confirm all that had transpired between himself and Lawan.

He said on April 21, the Saturday before the plenary, Lawan came in person to his residence and collected $250,000 in cash, as the first instalment, “then the next Monday night he came and collected another $250,000.

“On Tuesday, at 9am, just before the House commenced seating, Boniface came and collected another $120,000.”

Otedola confirmed that during the sting, Lawan and Boniface collected a total of $620,000 in three instalments as part of the $3 million demanded from him.

He added that with the $620,000 that had been extorted by Lawan and the committee, during the plenary, Zenon’s name was removed from the list of companies that had bought foreign exchange but did not import products.

Otedola continued: “He (Lawan) now asked for the balance of $2.5 million, but when I told him that I had no money now that the money was in Lagos, he suggested that I should charter a plane to fly the money from Lagos to Abuja.”

Otedola stressed that his decision to get the law enforcement and security agencies involved stemmed from the fact that he had not broken any law, maintaining that as a law-abiding citizen, he was saddened by the fact that he was being blackmailed by of all people, members of the legislature.

“If you have information that an armed robber is come to raid your home, won’t you notify the police?  So, that was the purpose of the sting operation.

“Besides, my integrity is paramount to me. I started selling petroleum products 14 years ago in drums and somebody who has never run a petrol station is trying to blackmail and extort money from me.

“If others (marketers) have paid money, maybe they are guilty. But I did not do anything wrong, so why should they extort money from me? As a law-abiding citizen, I had to involve the security agencies. Indeed, I’m very disappointed because I have worked hard to build my business.”

Insisting that he had nothing to hide or fear over what had happened, Otedola maintained if he was in the wrong he would not have involved the security agencies in the first instance.

In a reference to the strong denials made by Lawan since the scandal became public, Otedola stated, “When he (Lawan) demanded the bribe, I called the agencies. That is because I had nothing to hide. When the bribe was paid, why did he not call and report it to the agencies if he had nothing to.”

Meanwhile, “YAWADEY” gathered that the videotape of the illicit transaction had been sent to the EFCC to investigate the incident.

When contacted, the EFCC, however, said it had neither received the videotape nor had it commenced investigations into the bribery scandal.

EFCC Head of the Media Unit, Mr. Wilson Uwugiaren, said the allegation had not been brought to the knowledge of the commission.

According to him, the only related matter currently being handled by the EFCC was the report of the ad-hoc committee that the commission was studying to establish the facts and track down anyone found culpable for the alleged mismanagement of the PSF.

How K-Solo & Wife Ended Their 6months Old Marriage

Top music producer K-Solo married Kikelomo Akinkunmi in November 2011. By May 2012, the marriage was over. The wife told City People in an exclusive interview that the marriage ended because K-Solo was in it for money and also because he assaulted her so much she lost the pregnancy she was carrying when they got married.
According to Kikelomo…
K-Solo and I met on Facebook in April 2011 and continued our friendship on Blackberry. We eventually met face to face at a show in Eko Hotel in Lagos. I am not really based in Lagos. I am always in Warri, Port Harcourt, South Africa or Cameroon. I am always traveling because of my business. But because of K-Solo I started coming to Lagos frequently after we started dating.
By August of 2011 we started having issues. He was actually scamming one girl. One Leilani Ifeoma in Houston, Texas. Apparently they have not met physically, they met on the internet and she was also into entertainment so K-Solo started scamming her, collecting money from her and promising her marriage. The day I got to know I was in his house. He left his phone and stepped out, so I picked the call and I told her I am K-Solo’s wife  and the lady said it wasn’t possible because they were planning to get married. When I asked him about her, he said please don’t mind her, and later said he was sorry. But when I continued to demand for answers, he started beating me despite the fact that I was pregnant. He carried a lamp and threw at me.
Before then, when I met him, he told me he wanted to shoot a video for his song ‘Ni Igboro; and said he didn’t have money for it. I gave him N515, 000 for the video shoot. I gave him another N100, 000 some weeks before the video shoot. All through this I didn’t know he had a girlfriend that he had been living with for seven years. Each time I go to the studio, I see her there with a K-Solo tattoo on her arm. When I asked him who she was, he said she was his sister’s daughter. I later found out that when I gave him the money for the video shoot, he used half of it to celebrate a birthday for Bimbo.
A few weeks later, the lady in the US, Ify, called his phone and I picked it up. When I told him I’d picked his call, he got angry and went outside the house to go talk with the lady. He was begging the girl and lying that I was his sister. He even asked her if she was ready to sponsor their wedding. After listening in on the conservation, I told him then and there that the relationship was over, that I wanted my N515, 000 back. Not just that, I’d spend a lot of money on him. He started begging and crying. A few days later, I travelled to South Africa.
While in South Africa, he kept calling and begging and I eventually for give him because I was pregnant and he convinced me he was a changed man. He actually told me he had gone for deliverance. That was when we decided to get married. The only money K-Solo spent on the wedding was N15, 000 for wedding invites. I took care of everything. The cloth K-Solo was wearing, my own, his pilot suits, clothes, shoes, bag his mum wore, the feeding and drinks. I did everything. I spend over N3.5 million.
On the night of the wedding, K-Solo woke me up around 3am and said now that he’s my husband, when am I going to make him a signatory to my company’s account, and when am I going to change all my property to his name. I got scared and first thing in the morning I called my brother and told him what happened. He advised me to move all my documents, chequebooks out of the house, which I did. Whenever I asked for money for feeding or upkeep, he would shout at me and say ‘What’s the meaning of that? Don’t you have more money than me? What did I marry you for?
K-Solo started beating me up after the wedding and I lost the baby I was carrying when we got married on the 26th of November.
The marriage finally crashed in February 2012 when he called me and told me that Timaya just bought a Nigerian used Range Rover sport, that he wants me to buy him a brand new Range Rover worth 7.5 million and also put N10million in his account. I told him that even if I had the money, I won’t do it because I expect him to talk about how to invest money in productive business and not buying Range Rover. Moreover, I gave K-Solo N2million to pay for house rent for our 4-bedroom home at Ogba Medium estate, but he only gave the agent N1million and squandered the remaining money to buy Hublot wrist watches, Blackberry phones expensive shoes and designer wears. When I pointed this out to him, he told me that he will make the marriage miserable for me. On February 14th, after a misunderstanding, K-Solo packed a few of his things and moved to his mother’s house. I left our home too but was advised to go back since our marriage was still young. Because I wanted to make it work, I took my brother to K-Solo’s mother’s house to apologise to him and his mum. He later returned home. But immediately he returned, he asked me if I was ready to buy him the Range Rover and I told him it wasn’t going to happen.
So in March we went to Shoprite and he wanted me to buy two wine glasses that cost N2, 500 each. I suggested that we should open our wedding gifts that there definitely will be wine glasses somewhere, and he just slapped me right there in Shoprite, and as he was coming close to me I ran into the car park, he ran after me, removed his belt and started beating me. People started taking pictures of us and some guys tried to drag him away, by then, my right eye started bleeding. While they were trying to calm him down, he ran away from them and went to carry a stone and threw it at me, and I just passed out. I woke up in the hospital and what he told my family was that I fell. he started begging me and crying that it was the devil’s work.
After that beating, I stopped doing everything I used to do financially in our home and he became very frustrated and aggressive. But the marriage finally packed on a particular night I came back home late from going to buy fruits for the house. Immediately I entered the house, he got up and started shouting at me. He started coming close, and I tried to leave the room, but he dragged me back, locked the door and threw the key in the drawer. He started beating me, slapping me and broke a coke bottle on my forehead. I stood up and ran to the bathroom, he followed me, took the mopping stick, broke it and started hitting my stomach that the pregnancy must come out. By then I was pregnant again. I was bleeding on my forehead, and he picked up the washing machine in the bathroom and threw it at me. I was just there bleeding and lifeless, so finally some of his boys were able to break the door and they started holding him back. The guys tried to stop the bleeding on my forehead but couldn’t stop the one underneath. They tried to take me to the hospital but K-Solo prevented them. So I was bleeding from 11pm to 7am the following morning, which was when they finally took me to the hospital. By the time I returned from the hospital, he had moved his things from the house. That was when I discovered that my trinkets box with gold over N2.5million was missing and this was not the first time he’s stealing from me. I wrote a petition to the commissioner of police and on May 29th, the police went to pick him up. The case is with the police and I told them all I want is my trinkets back and for him to sign an undertaken that he will never touch me again and threaten to kill me. He has said he’s not the owner of the pregnancy, which is fine with me. I don’t want him to come close to the child and the child will not bear his name.