By Soni Daniel, Northern Region Editor

ABUJA — As controversy rages over the sack of the Executive Secretary of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, FRCN, the Federal Government, yesterday, offered the real reason why it relieved Jim Obazee of his appointment.

Obazee was shown the way out barely two days after the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, announced a new Overseer for Nigeria on January 7, 2017, sparking global outrage and disquiet within the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria.

To douse the tension generated by the development, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, yesterday, gave what look like the first official explanation for the action taken by the Federal Government against Obazee.

Malami, who is also the Minister of Justice, told Vanguard in Abuja that Obazee did not obtain the approval of the relevant authorities before implementing the FRCN code, thereby making a mess of the law.

Jim Obazee

Malami explained that contrary to the fear in certain quarters that Obazee was sacked in order to prevent a religious uproar, the Federal Government was rather peeved by his non-compliance with applicable laws in the application and consummation of the codes of the FRCN.

He said, “It was not about preventing religious uproar but about irregularities associated with compliance with the applicable law in its (FRCN) application and consummation.”

Malami admitted that although the FRCN law had been in existence before the advent of the current administration, its code was meant to be tailored after the law while its formulation and approval were supposed to be made by a board.

“Unfortunately, there has been no board in place to have approved the codes,” the minister noted.

The explanation by the AGF comes a day after a top official of the administration had said in confidence that the sack of Obazee had nothing to do with the resignation of Adeboye early last week.

Also other sources who didn’t want to be mentioned revealed that the removal of Mr. Obazeew based on an advice of the Attorney General of the Federation had been approved by President Muhammadu Buhari before the decision of the General Overseer (GO) of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye stepped aside as Head of RCCG in Nigeria.

As learnt, in Abuja, contrary to the widely held opinion, that Mr. Obazee was sacked because he forced Pastor to resign, the resignation of the pastor and the removal of the Executive Secretary was a mere co-incidence, as Mr. Obazee’s sack was to be announced at the same period, whether or not the pastor resigned.

Sources said, “The sack of Mr. Jim Obazee has nothing to do with the decision of the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) Pastor Enoch Adeboye to resign, retire, step aside or whatever. It was just a co-incidence.

Even if Adeboye had not stepped aside, the man (Obazee) was gone. It had absolutely nothing to do with the pastor. The key issue is that there is a procedure for doing things all over the but he completely ignored it.”

The sources explained further that the code in question had not gone through the entire process before the former ES announced that it was law and must be complied with.

According to them, it should have been approved by the board of the FRCN after due inputs from Public hearings, passed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, who would then present it to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and obtain the cabinet approval before the FRC could issue it for compliance.

Even at that, the sources said that the code was not a law but best practice guidelines and that organization were meant to comply or explain why they won’t comply.

They explained, “The corporate governance code which is a regulatory guidelines for corporate organizations meant to guide both public and private (profit and non-profit) organizations is a code that the FRCN is working on.

“There is a process of passing that code. The committee working on it was inaugurated by the last administration. But the process of passing that code meant that by the time that committee finishes working on it, there are supposed to be public hearings and all that. By the time the committee finishes its work, that code is supposed to get to the governing board (of FRCN) for approval.

“But as you know, all the boards were dissolved. So the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment was in effect the board (for the parastatals that he was supervising). When it goes through the board, it would be submitted to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to give approval for it to be issued.

“Some people have interpreted it wrongly. It is not a law. It is a regulatory guideline and the basic problem was that the FRCN unilaterally decided to come out. And in essence this is something that was going to affect corporate organizations, the way businesses were being run in a very significant way.

“This administration is saying we want to make the way businesses are done in Nigeria easier. We don’t need further bottlenecks. We need to make it easier. And the corporate world was saying, ‘look, this governance code hasn’t gotten down with us. We needed to understand it; we needed to make inputs into it.’

“So when the FRC unilaterally took a decision on it, the minister said suspend it and explain and note the concerns from the various corporate organizations- because it was supposed to have come to the minister but the Executive Secretary of FRC went ahead on his own and issued the code.
“There all kinds of letters from various corporate organizations. The ministry was inundated with all kinds of letters and everywhere.

“The issue of the churches and other non-profit organizations were just minor. It was absolutely minor. It wasn’t something we were even thinking about. Because even in that code, what the corporate Governance Code says about the churches was “comply or explain”. It wasn’t like this is law. It wasn’t a law. I don’t know