After PRNigeria Report, Chairman Says ‘Cabal Has Taken Over NDIC’

After PRNigeria Report, Chairman Says ‘Cabal Has Taken Over NDIC’

Less than 24 hours after an exclusive report by PRNigeria on a controversy trailing the appointment of the Board of the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), its chairman, Dr AbdulHakeem Mobolaji Abdullateef, has cried out over what he called the ‘monumental fraud’ perpetrated by a cabal in the system through the corporation’s new act.

PRNigeria reported that in a single month (May 2023) several actions were taken including the confirmation of the appointment of the board members on May 9, their swearing-in on May 25, and a new law signed on May 25 by President Muhammadu Buhari repealing the appointments of the chairman from outside the public service. https://prnigeria.com/2023/06/11/controversy-ndic-chairman/

In reaction to the resport, Dr Abdullateef in a Facebook post on Monday, called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to carry out a probe on the new act of NDIC.

He said the present NDIC ‘stinks because there is a lot of corruption going on’.

He said, “The cabal has taken over the NDIC. They know former President Muhammadu Buhari would be so busy and would not be able to read everything they put in the new Act 48 hours before leaving office.

“It will shock you to know that the new act taken to Buhari was different from the votes and proceedings of that of the National Assembly that passed it.

“They (cabal) know that lawmakers will oppose it if they introduce the section on the floor. So they hid it and then included it to the one taken to the former president for assent.

“While waiting for Buhari’s confirmation after our appointment, they quickly introduced a new bill which will truncate everything we wanted to do.

“With the new act, they have tied the hands of the President that only the former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) can be the Executive or Managing Director of the NDIC contrary to the free hand given to the President in the former act to appoint any competent person to head the board.

“I understand they are trying to doctor this act now but I call on the clerk of the NASS not to allow them to put his name in mess.

“The former act allows the six geo political zones to be represented in the board but now they have removed that in the new act and made the permanent secretary of the ministry of finance head of the board.

“When I visited the permanent secretary on this, he told me he told them several times not to make him the head because of his busy schedule. They know this and still went ahead so they can do all the mess they want to do.”

He said the cabal had killed the career progression of 1,600 Nigerians by the action.

“NDIC will no longer be able to make depositors smile. I have thousands of petitions on my table by Nigerians who have found it difficult to claim their rights because of the deliberate frustrating processes. They are denying Nigerians of several trillions of naira.

“The former law says NDIC is free to investigate the banks, but now, the new act, which is Godwin Emefiele’s document, says you can only do that with the approval of the CBN,” he added.

He said Tinubu should not act on the new NDIC Act because “it contains 35 sections smuggled in by corruption engineers.

He said, “Section 7 takes away the rights and representatives of the ministry of finance and replaced it with two directors of the CBN. It should be returned to the NASS after proclamation for proper debate.

“The President should probe why what is passed is fundamentally different from what was assented, what happened in the period in between.”

Abdullateef who wept during the session, called for the support for present administration to reform governance and fight corruption in the system.

“Many of the microfinance banks that were said to have failed are liquid and viable and wanted to assist the masses. But out of the fraud of this cabal, they closed down the banks and inserted sections to take over the funds and properties,” he added.

By PRNigeria