Nigeria’s Special Presidential Investigation Panel for Recovery of Public Property has given the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu; a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, 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 trio, as well as former Deputy Speaker and current Senator Usman Bayero Nafada.
Former Nigerian 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 Obono-Obla-led panel said, the five of them illegally acquired their then-official residences as their private properties.
DailyTrust reports that the immediate past Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan had in November 2010 was said to have given leave to the Senate President, the Deputy Senate President, the Speaker 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.
Daily Trust also reports that former President Jonathan had directed that the sale of the property should be gazette, in his minute, in a memo sent to the then minister of the FCT Senator Bala Muhammad dated 18 November 2010, but that was not done.
“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the plaintiff (referring to David Mark) should not be sold under Government monetization policy, the gazette would have superseded the previous one, the source added.
“So the previous sale cannot hold 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 Executive had no right in the first place to give order for the houses to be sold to principal officers of the National Assembly since the houses were not ordinary houses but institutional houses, the source said.