Drama as reps probe multibillion dollars centenary city agreement

IT was a dramatic scene at the House of Representatives on Friday during the probe into the multibillion dollars Centenary City agreement, as the chairman of the House Committee on Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Hon Herman Hembe, engaged former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, over alleged irregularities surrounding the agreement on Centenary City.

The drama started when the former SGF accused the chairman of the committee of having bias mind towards him and asked him to disqualify himself by handing over the proceedings to his deputy.

But Hon Hembe insisted that the former SGF who is also former Senate President should not dictate to the committee how to carry out its activities.

In his address, Senator Anyim alleged that, “when the former Managing Director of Security and Exchange Commission accused you of demanding bribe from her, you pushed for her sack and I refused to sack her as Secretary to Government of the Federation” stressing that, “I will not allow you to use the platform of this committee to victimise me.”

Hon Hembe at this point told the former senate president that, he “cannot assume the chairman of the committee, it’s not fair.
According to him, “Let me just say that we are a house of free lawmakers, we are a house of order. We are a house of due process. Let me just say to the former President of the Senate and the former SGF that in my opening remarks, I tried to show you courtesy. Please, don’t interrupt as far as this hearing is concerned, I’m chairman here. I am chairman and I would not allow you to usurp that position I am here on no account of yours.
“I have shown you respect. I even made a comment in the beginning that you ought not to appear by saying clearly that it was brought to my attention by certain quarters that we shouldn’t have invited the former Senate President to a hearing like this out of sheer respect. There’s no law that says that you can’t do it. It’s just respect for the fact that he’s been Senate President and I took note of that and spoke to my colleague chairman in the Senate, Dino Melaye, last night.

“And I asked him to communicate with the former Senate President and ask if we will excuse him today. It doesn’t mean that if we excuse him and later, we won’t write to request for such information. What we are doing here borders on his activities as Secretary to Government of the Federation. For Mr former Senate President to impute bias when he does not know what we are doing here. We have not even said a word and he’s already inputting bias,,” he stated.
On his part, The former SGF alleged that, “you have told everybody that cares to listen that when the former DG of Security and Exchange Commission accused you of demanding bribe from her, you pushed for her to be sacked and I refused to sack her while I was SGF and so this an opportunity for you to pay me back.
“Mr chairman, I would not allow you to use the National Assembly platform to pursue this personal vendetta, it’s not acceptable and I will not submit to it because it offends the rule of fair hearing and all I’m asking for is fair hearing.

“Two, Mr Chairman, you have been threatening to conduct this public hearing for over a year now. In fact, you ended last year with it and this year, you started again with it. You scheduled it for January 27 and you later moved it to February 1 and again moved it to February 3, Mr Chairman, we only discovered your game plan for all the postponements when you started sending messages to the Managing Director to come and see you privately.

“It was after all your efforts to get the Managing Director to come and see you privately failed that you confirmed this date. I want you to know that nobody will see you privately and we are here for the hearing and we will have the hearing.

Mr Chairman, Honourable members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that Mr Chairman has a deep-seated personal interest and bias in this matter and so, he’s not in a position to guarantee fair hearing to myself, the Centenary City management and indeed to the entire subject matter. I have accordingly demand that Mr Chairman should disqualify himself and let the Vice Chairman take over and let us continue.

“So Mr Chairman, you hand over to your vice and excuse us to continue. And so, if you will be able to disqualify yourself, there’s no reason anybody will submit himself to a system and an arrangement that does not guarantee fair hearing. So, we are here for the hearing, we are ready for the hearing but we should get fair hearing”, Senator Anyim posited.

However, Hon Hembe said that from the findings of the committee “only two companies own the City Project and they are Basic Start Company Ltd and Company First Ltd Company with share capital of 10,000 each.

He added that, the shareholders Mr Paul Oki and Boma Ozobia were allocated 1,267hectares of land in the FCT.

To this end, he ruled that those involved must explain to us why they are allocated such expanse of land and documented evidence at the next hearing scheduled for next week Tuesday