By Secrets Reporters
A dead man’s empire is at the centre of the final charges in the petition now before President Bola Tinubu, and the woman accused of taking it is no ordinary official. She is Emem Nnana Usoro, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. According to the petition filed by Crusade for Justice on behalf of the family of the late Edirin Jerry Wesley, two entire businesses built by the deceased, a housing estate of about 1,000 flats spread over more than 80 hectares in Taraba State and a broadcasting network run in partnership with a federal government agency, have passed into Usoro’s sole control, while Wesley’s widow, Grace Wesley, and his family are locked outside, unable to see a single document or ask a single question about what was once theirs.
The petition alleges that the building and contract project in Jalingo, the Taraba State capital, consisting of about 1,000 units of flats and sitting on over 80 hectares of land belonging to Wesley’s estate, has met what the petitioners call “the same fate” as the cars, the houses and the other assets listed in the earlier parts of the petition. The same fate, in the petitioners’ telling, means the estate’s biggest single project now sits where the family cannot reach it, cannot account for it and cannot benefit from it, years after the man who built it was buried.
The second empire is a broadcaster. The petition describes the Nigeria Customs Broadcasting Network as a collaborative venture between Wesley’s company, Skytick Global Nigeria Limited, and the Nigeria Customs Service, a partnership between a private businessman and a federal agency, built on a contract the family says was breached. When that breach generated correspondence meant for Wesley’s family, the petition alleges, the letters never arrived. They “found their way into the hands of” Usoro instead. The petitioners say she has since held on to the network, described in the petition as worth billions of naira, and used her control of it to taunt the family, leaving them, in their own words, with “no access to any information regarding the operations of the said company.” A widow whose late husband co-built a broadcasting network with the Nigeria Customs Service cannot, on the petition’s account, obtain one page of information about it, because the Central Bank Deputy Governor who allegedly intercepted the family’s mail is the one holding the keys.
The petition then reaches outside the estate dispute altogether and drags in a courtroom scandal. It alleges that Usoro was named as a co-respondent for adultery in a divorce suit at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Suit No. PET/251/2019, filed, the petitioners say, at a time when she was cohabiting with Wesley. The petitioners, however, damage their own exhibit in the same breath, because they state in the document that they will “confirm the status of this case very soon”, an admission, in their own filing, that this particular claim had not been fully verified even by the people who carried it to the President.
What Crusade for Justice wants is total. Through its President, Richard Nwankwo, the group has asked President Tinubu to use his office to direct Usoro to render a full account of her handling of Wesley’s estate and to hand back every asset of the deceased in her possession to his widow and family. The petition adds a threat wrapped in restraint: it states that the group has “deliberately excluded certain issues” which it says could put “a monumental dent” on the image of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and that it is prepared to produce further evidence if required. Copies of the petition went beyond the President’s desk, to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, to the President’s Chief of Staff, to the National Human Rights Commission and to the Code of Conduct Bureau, the very bureau charged with policing the assets and conduct of public officers like the Deputy Governor now accused of swallowing a dead man’s broadcasting company and his 1,000-unit housing estate.
