ADEBOYE'S RETIREMENT: MINISTER AND FRCN BOSS CLASHED

Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Okechukwu  Enelamah, the G.O of RCCG Worldwide and the Executive Secretary  of the Financial Regulatory Council of Nigeria, Mr. Jim Obazee,

On Saturday, 7th of January, the now former G.O of the Redeem Christian Church of God, Pastor E.A Adeboye, announced his retirement and named a successor in Pastor Joseph Obayemi. This was due to a certain governance code which stipulates   20  years tenure   for heads of   religious groups   and civil society groups in the country.

According to The PUNCH reliably gathered in Abuja on Sunday that the minister had written the FRCN boss, directing him to suspend the implementation of the controversial regulation.

But it was learnt that Obazee defied the instruction of the minister, insisting that the implementation of the regulation would go ahead.

Findings showed that Obazee said the implementation of the regulation could not be suspended because there was no gazette that indicated that it had been amended or suspended.

It was gathered that though the minister’s letter to the FRCN boss was written on October 17, 2016, the council had insisted on the resignation of heads of other affected groups.

source in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, who confided in The PUNCH, confirmed that the minister had written the Executive Secretary of the FRCN, directing him  not to execute the regulation.

He stated, “There is an issue with the new code of corporate governance and the minister wrote the Financial Reporting Council and told the council not to execute it because a lot of people from the private sector have complained about it.

“So the minister wanted to look into it and see what the issues were.  He (FRC boss) was asked not to go ahead with executing it. There is a controversy on that FRC issue and we are now looking into the matter to know what the issues are before we can finally take a decision. This is where the matter is currently.”

But a source in the FRCN, who spoke on Sunday on condition of anonymity, said the organisation would not heed the directive of the minister on the code.

The source added, “The Minister of Industry,  Trade and Investment wrote a letter to us saying that he didn’t want the code to be effective now and that he wanted it to be suspended for now.

“But you know in government circles, particularly in the public sector, when you are suspending something, you back it up with a paper – a gazette and all of that, but as it is now, there is no gazette.

“It must have a gazette, indicating that the law has been suspended. There is no gazette to that effect that this law has been suspended. So as it is now, the code has not been suspended because there is no gazette to that effect and that is where we are now.

“The code has been on naturally, right from (ex-President Goodluck) Jonathan’s time and this has been over four years. When the code was being done, we engaged all the stakeholders and their presentations formed part of what was in the code at the end of the day.

“The only people that took the matter to court were the churches and they lost.  It was on the day they lost that our legal adviser said ‘okay, we could  go ahead and release the code and that if we don’t release this code, other bodies will go to court to challenge it’.

“The private sector came to us three weeks ago and they told us the sections they wanted amended and we told them that we will look at it when we are doing what we call fine-tuning.”