The Special Presidential
Investigation Panel, for Recovery of Public Property has given the Deputy
Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, a former Speaker of the House of Reps, Dimeji
Bankole, and former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Aloysius Katsina-Alu, 21 days to
vacate their residences.
The Chief Okoi Obono-Obla-led
panel issued the quit notice on Thursday to the three politicians, as well as
former Deputy Speaker and current Senator Usman Bayero Nafada.
A former Senate President, David
Mark, received similar quit notice from the Panel back in September to which he
had since filed a suit before the Federal High Court in Abuja to quash all the
steps taken to evict him and recover the house from him by the panel.
The panel said the five of them
illegally acquired their then-official residences as their private properties.
According to DailyTrust, the
immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan had in November 2010 reportedly gave
leave to the Senate President, the Deputy Senate President, the Speaker of the
House of Representatives, and the Deputy Speaker of the House of
Representatives, to “purchase” their official quarters.
A source told Daily Trust, “The
Senate President’s residence was sold to David Mark for N748 million; Speaker,
House of Representatives’ residence was sold to Hon Dimeji Bankole for N670
million; while Deputy Senate President residence was sold to Senator Ike
Ekweremadu for N458 million.
“Deputy Speaker House of
Representatives residence was sold to Senator Nafada for N348.5 million; and
they were all sold without competitive bidding contrary to the provisions of
the Public Procurement Act especially Section 15 thereof”, one of the sources
said, adding that the residence of Juctice Katsina-Alu was sold to him at
N45million.
The newspaper also reports that
former President Jonathan had directed that the sale of the property should be
gazetted in the Federal Government Gazette in his minute in a memo sent to him
by the then minister of the FCT Senator Bala Muhammad dated 18 November 2010,
but that was not done.
The source added, “A gazette is a
notice to the whole world of the position of government on any issue and since
there was a prevailing gazette that the house bought by the plaintiff
(referring to David Mark) should not be sold under Government monetization
policy, the gazette would have superseded the previous one.
“So the previous gazette prevails
since the sale was not gazetted. That alone has vitiated the sale. Secondly the
sale is against the public procurement Act which provides any contract for a
good and service must be through competitive bidding. The sale was not through
competitive bidding.”
According to the news outlet added
that the houses, which were not ordinary houses but institutional houses to
principal officers of the National Assembly and the Executive had no right in
the first place to given order for the houses to be sold.
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A country where public officers such as Senate President, CJN etc would buy their official residences..if their predecessors had bought it earlier, where would they have stayed..So much mess under Jonathan... So much..If Jona had bought his own, where would Baba have stayed..Let's learn to respect simple logic...Over sense people
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