Secret Reporters No place to hide
Activities of Mr. Jim Obazee, the executive secretary of Nigeria’s Financial Reporting Council (FRC) may have finally attracted the attention of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the country’s antigraft agency with the latest exposure of his property in Houston Texas, United States of America.
Information from the Harris County Appraisal District Real Property Account has revealed that the house own by Obazee Jim .O. was valued at $104,812 (about N22.3million) as at January 1, 2015.
Nigeria’s Code of Conduct and Tribunal Act prohibits a public officer like Obazee from owning foreign accounts. Section 7 of the act states, “Any public officer specified in the second schedule to this Act or any other persons as the President may, from time to time, by order prescribe, shall not maintain or operate a bank account in any country outside Nigeria.”
Nigeria, recently acclaimed Africa’s largest economy, and one of the largest oil producing countries in this planet earth is a home for large number of poor people as a result of activities of corrupted public officers and politicians.
The building own by Obazee has three bedrooms and two baths and it sits on 1,516 square feet.
Investigations have also shown that Jim Obazee bought the property located at 15918 Mission Village DR, Houston Texas 77083 through outright payment in 2012 barely two years after he became the executive secretary of the commission. He was in an annual salary scale of less than N20million then.
Section 15 (3) of the Code of Conduct and Tribunal Act also provides that “any property or assets acquired by a public officer after any declaration required by subsection (1) of this section and which is not fairly attributable to income, gifts or loans approved by this Act, shall be deemed to have been acquired in breach of this Act unless the contrary is proved.”
Section 12 of the same Act provides that “No person shall offer a public officer any property, gift or benefit of any kind as an inducement or bribe for the granting of any favour or the discharge in his favour of the public officer’s duties.”
Financial Reporting Council led by Jim Obazee will next week host Nigeria’s large and small scale corporate as well as non-profit organizations to a public hearing on its unified Code of Corporate Governance.
Before now, the forty-nine (49) year old Accountant who claims to be an epitome of transparency has been in the news. Recently, a Nigerian local media described him as “an icon of scandal”.
Nigeria’s new President, Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday said, his administration had received firm assurances of coperation from the United States and other countries in his quest to recover and repatriate funds stolen from Nigeria.
The President’s special adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina said in a statement that the President spoke while granting audience to members of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Nigerians voted Buhari for his integrity and proven record of tackling corruption.
By owning a property worth $104,812 in United States of America for past three years, Obazee Jim has been paying property tax to the US Government while he earns salaries from ‘tax payers’ money in Nigeria.
