|
Ruling on
ENRON vindicates me, says ex-lawmaker
By Habib Aruna
Assistant
Political Editor,
Lagos
A former member of the Lagos
State House of Assembly, Thomas Fadeyi, says he has been vindicated
following the conviction of five persons and four bankers with a top US
investment bank, over a transaction involving the Lagos State Government
Independent Power Project.
Fadeyi, who reacted on Tuesday
to the judgment in Lagos through a press statement, observed that if the
state house of assembly had performed its oversight functions effectively,
the alleged fraud could have been averted. A Texas jury had last week
handed down criminal convictions against former executives of the now
collapsed power generating giant, ENRON, for their roles in the deal in
which the company purportedly sold interests in three power-generating
badges located offshore Ikorodu in 1999.
Fadeyi, now Deputy Director of
Organisation for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state, said he
knew all along that the deal held dire consequences for the state and that
he raised alarm but was ignored. He disclosed how he specifically brought
a motion to the House on the issue but was not listed for debate
throughout the tenure of the assembly. Rather, according to him, he was
labeled a troublemaker.
The statement further reads:
�The point is that conscience
is an open wound and only truth can heal it. My odyssey in the House
during Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu�s first term is worth recounting with
all the abuses of office but I am now a happy man because the truth is
here with us. Despite my vehement objections to all these acts of
executive abuses, I was accused and blackmailed as a
troublemaker.
�My motion on the issue was
ignored but thank God events have shown that some of us saw the dire
implications of an evil project for the people of Lagos. We cried out and
I even went on self-imposed one-month suspension to protest it but nobody
listened to us. I am now satisfied because I have been
vindicated�.
Fadeyi, who was a prominent
voice of dissent in the last assembly, regretted that recovering the lost
money would be a difficult task since the ENRON parent body in the US had
since collapsed. He called on the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission
(ICPC) to wade into the matter immediately.
| 
