By Favour Nnabugwu

The controversy that trailed the Head of the Civil Service Cooperative Society over allegations of impropriety and refusal of the incumbent President to relinquish his position after retirement may soon be resolved as the President of the cooperative, Mr Stephen Esezebor has said all allegations against him were false and mischievous.

Esezebor in an interview with Vanguard in Abuja said all allegations against him have been proved wrong by anti-graft and law enforcement agencies after thorough investigations carried out by them.

He said all he wants is to ensure that the cooperative is run like any organised society where members do not abuse loan procedures and an election is conducted to elect a President whom he will hand over to rather than having some caucus pick someone they can manipulate to the detriment of the entire membership of the society.

“There has not been any election since the cooperative was formed in 1982. I was picked by a member of the executive to head the cooperative because he saw some potential in me that will drive the society on the right path.

“I saw a lot of leakages and since the cooperative started in 1982, there has never been an election. So, If I am going to hand over, I will hand over to a duly elected president and not to an inner caucus person.”

“For the first time in the history of the cooperative since it was established in 1982, we have a five-year account from 2009 to 2014 and we keyed into the e-payment system as well. If l was a thief l will not waste my precious time going through the hassles. It will enable anybody to see how far we have come and be able to consolidate on the achievements we have made so far.”

As an experience budget person, Esezebor said the petitions against him was as a result of the fact that he did not allow the caucus to squander the cooperative money through abuse of loans and acquisition of the society’s landed property.

“Once there is an election and a duly elected president emerges, l will gladly hand over to whoever the person is. All l want to do is to hand over the asset and account of the cooperative to a credible leaders in the overall interest of the over 800 members.”

“They dragged me to the Police, National Human Right Commission, Economy and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Embelembe and Aso Radio.
They all carried their investigations and could not pin any their allegations on me.”

He said the rate at which executive members of the cooperative abused their positions can ruin the entire system if had put a stop to it.

“In the past, the executive and committee members kept collecting loan without paying the previous and I asked if that was how to spend money? That was when the problem started.”

“One of them got N1million loan to sink a bore hole because it is a feasible project, if you are have a bore hole and you are selling water you can easily repay us the money, it will not affect the person.

Then after some time, she said her car was bad, that her brother gave her money to buy a car but she spent the money, we still gave her another loan, plus the one my predecessor gave her, amounting to N3million loan.”

Continuing he said, “After some time, she came back again, and l said No, it is not possible. She then brought some Apo land papers for which she needed the loan, based on that l went to AGIS to verify the land in question and l discovered that those lands had been revoked by Senator Bala Mohammed.”

“They started asking for loans like that. For instance, if the cooperative has N6million and the land committee chairman wants N500, 000 and the credit department which Esquire heads needs N4million and Kingsley wants N800, 000, what then will be left then for members? And anytime we buy lands some of our members suggest we increase that amount we bought the land, l refused. I said we can always use the 5% commission from the land since we double as agents. And we also give committee member complimentary land  like  N70, 000 lands, as one of the committee members and management team, you pay N50, 000  and forget the N20, 000 that we use as administrative cost and that was the process we were using yet there were not satisfied.

“Then somebody emerged from nowhere that he wants to buy the land for we bought at N9.4million for N17million. I said no, because we have already told our members that we have a land. That is not possible.”