When President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday, October 10, met behind closed doors with former President, Goodluck Jonathan, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Nigerians have been wondering what the two men discussed as nothing filtered out of the meeting. It was the fifth time Jonathan was visiting the Presidential Villa since leaving power, having been last seen in Aso Rock in 2016.
Huhuonline.com can now exclusively report that the two men discussed the controversial sale of the Oil Production License (OPL) 245 to oil majors, ENI and Shell which the Jonathan administration negotiated with Malabu Oil and Gas owned by former Petroleum Minister, Dan Etete. Jonathan went to Aso Rock to obtain personal guarantees and assurances from Buhari that he will not be the target of prosecution after investigation by the British police unit on Proceeds of Crime flagged the transaction as “money laundering” and urged the federal government to cancel the deal and hold those involved accountable, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Over eight years after OPL 245 was bought by ENI and Shell in April, 2011 from Malabu Oil & Gas, in a complicated financial arrangement, the matter is now one of President Buhari’s top priorities. Aso Rock sources told Huhuonline.com during the meeting, Buhari informed Jonathan of his intention to recover the commissions paid in the deal; as well as punish Nigerian companies and officials who pocketed kick-backs and, if needs be, to take back the OPL 245 license. “Jonathan and his kinsman, Etete who both hail from Bayelsa state will be particularly under the microscope, and the president wanted to give a heads up to his predecessor, of what was in the pipeline,” a source told Huhuonline.com.
Huhuonline.com also gathered that Jonathan was personally involved in all phases of the negotiations. It was he who in January, 2011, four months before the presidential elections, summoned all the parties to his office and asked them to reach agreement after talks on the price had deadlocked at the end of 2010. And it was also Jonathan who ordered the Department of Petroleum Resources to approve the sale even though the deal meant the production sharing contract that Shell and ENI inherited from Malabu had been crafted initially for a Nigerian company and offered particularly favorable terms.
ENI laid out $1,092 billion for the block under an arrangement that allowed go-betweens to line their pockets via an account held by Nigeria in the New York branch of JP Morgan bank. On top of the purchase price came a $209.96 million signing bonus, which Jonathan allegedly pocketed as commission. Shell and ENI each own 50% of the block but Huhuonline.com understands that ENI will operate it, even though Shell was operator on the concession for four years (2002-2006). The Italian company’s leading role can be explained by the fact that it alone took the risk of negotiating with Malabu even though its chief executive, Etete, who served as oil minister under late president Sani Abacha, was convicted of money laundering in Paris in 2007.
According to two Aso Villa sources familiar with the matter, Buhari reportedly told Jonathan that international financial institutions and foreign governments are pressuring him to rein in all those involved in the deal, as it has now emerged that several members of the Abacha family lined their pockets. The Italian government has renewed its official request to Nigeria for judicial assistance in order to trade notes on the OPL 245 case. The Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Bill 2016 which would facilitate this type of cooperation is currently stuck in Nigeria’s Senate.
Aso Villa sources also told Huhuonline.com that Buhari is conflicted between following the evidence to where it leads, and trying to avoid the public embarrassment and impropriety of being perceived as vindictive against his predecessor. “He [Buhari] wanted to make sure Jonathan has closed his tracks; but Jonathan was confident and urged Buhari to proceed, saying he would not mind waving his immunity to testify in open court, if summoned to do so,” the source said. Huhuonline.com was also told that the man handling the case in Abuja; the director of public prosecutions, Mohamed Diri, has interviewed several ENI officials as part of the investigations and in view of the evidence in hand, he is building the charges that Nigeria will lay against the oil companies and Nigerian officials involved in the deal. Diri has also collected evidence on the case gathered by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), whose interim chairman, Ibrahim Magu has been engaged in a public shouting match with the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Bello Adoke.
The EFCC is suing Adoke for corruption, on the grounds of his involvement in the controversial OPL 245 deal. For the past few months, Adoke, who has been living in exile since 2015, has been in a heated media war with Magu, whom he accused of ingratitude, since Adoke had strongly advocated for Magu as a replacement for then EFCC chairman Ibrahim Lamorde. Huhuonline.com has also learned that Buhari does not want to be seen as going after his perceived political opponents and has decided to maintain Diri with no known political affiliation who, indeed, was appointed to the job by Jonathan. Diri,
his boss, Justice Minister Abubaker Malami, with Babagana Monguno, the National Security Adviser (NSA), are also looking into all arms contracts signed between 2007-2015.
Containing nearly 9 billion barrels of reserves, OPL 245 has been the theatre of an epic hut discreet struggle for over 10 years. It was one of the biggest transactions ever in Nigeria’s offshore, but also one of the most secretive. As Buhari seeks to shed light on the part played by Jonathan administration officials in the deal, the billion dollars that ENI paid to Abuja could well turn into another protracted legal fracas. And behind it lie the huge commissions generated by the deal. OPL 245 is a geological gem that is crucial to ENI as the Etan and Zabazaba fields contain 550 million barrels of oil as well as major amounts of gas.
Worth $1.3 billion, the highly complex transaction has been the source of controversial immediately the deal was signed after two middle-men who weren’t paid their commissions moved to block it. Back in June 2011, an escrow account set up by Shell and Nigeria at JP Morgan to pay for OPL 245 was frozen at the request of Russian lawyer Ednan Agayev. Agayev, who helped arrange the deal was demanding a $65 million commission from Malabu, and launched an arbitration procedure in London. Also in London, the another middle-man, Nigeria’s Emeka Obi, demanded a $215 million commission and managed to get a bank to freeze that sum on Malabu’s accounts. Obi is the son of Senator Onyeabo Obi, former PDP BoT member. Obi advised the former government of Olusegun Obasanjo on its privatization program and, like Agayev, acts as a consultant for the Russian mining group Rusal. While the cases involving Agayev and Obi prevented Malabu from pocketing its profit from the deal, champagne corks were popped in Milan as Shell and ENI took ownership of OPL 245.
