BURATAI, DUBAI AND SAHARA.

Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai was promoted to the rank of Major General in December 2012 and soon after that assumed the role of commandant, Nigerian Army School of Infantry. From all indications, Lt Gen Buratai was still the commandant of that school in January/ February 2014. It is not clear to me exactly what the general was deployed to do at Army headquarters prior to May 2014 but what is clear is that he was appointed as the Commander of the Multinational Joint Task Force to combat Boko Haram in May 2014, a position he occupied till July 2015 when he was appointed the Chief of Army Staff (COAS).

According to the petition referenced by Sahara reporters, the COAS and his two wives were said to have paid for a property in Dubai in one transaction; the money for the purchase was stated to have most likely come from a vehicle contract scam which occurred when Buratai was the Director of Procurement at the Army HQ. This in essence means that whatever money Buratai  waylaid happened during the probably less than 3months period between when he was still the commandant of the School of Infantry and May 2014 when he assumed his command position of the Joint task force in Niger republic.

In the petition allegedly written by “concerned soldiers and officers from the Northeast,” a certain Usman Gamawa of Baggash Investment Ltd got a contract from the procurement unit of Army HQ to supply vehicles and motorcycles. It was stated that this company got in second hand automobiles from Niger Republic and refurbished them. The petition also elaborated on the Dubai property and financial maneuvers of the General since he assumed the office of the COAS in July 2015.

The Buratais were said to have reached an agreement with a Dubai based real estate company Sigma III limited on January 13, 2013 to purchase a property which was part of their ‘Project TFG Marina Hotel.’ Unit 2711 was quoted to be worth N120million of which N115.6million was accepted as full payment as a sign of goodwill for early payment.  One of the documents provided by Sahara reporters was a letter dated August 20, 2015 with a faded inscription of Sigma printed at the top. This letter contained the names and passport numbers of the buyers as well as details of the Sales Purchase Agreement which was signed on January 13, 2014. Also seen in the poor quality photocopied letter was an indication of full payment for the Project TFG Marina Hotel unit 2711 property while a separate sheet had the signatures of the representative of the seller and the three buyers. SR however stated that this document dated August 20, 2015 was signed on the 13^th of January 2014.

There was no scanned document of the general’s international passport data page but those of his wives were available. The similarity between the signatures on the passports with those on the purchase agreement can be disputed in a law court. Another document provided in the story was a scanned Skye bank lodgment voucher dated 10-8-15 which the petitioners claimed was proof of several huge deposits paid by the general’s middle men into his Skye bank account. The Army has released a statement since this story broke and part of the information they provided was that Buratai does not operate any Skye bank account.

The voucher had “TFG Real Estate” as the account name and “1770380452” into which a cash payment of 10million naira in N1000 bills was allegedly paid on the stated date while the name of the depositor was simply “Tukur”. How exactly does TFG Real Estate translate to mean Tukur Buratai? There is clearly something amiss with this information as TFG real estate refers to the “TFG” in “Project TFG Marina Hotel” sold by Sigma III. The information about a certain Major Adegbola whose number was on the deposit slip cannot be said to be significant enough to nail Buratai. Nothing on that scanned voucher which had an almost completely faded cashier stamp points to the COAS. I attempted to add the account number as a beneficiary on my GTBank mobile banking platform but could not get a feedback from the host bank perhaps suggesting that such an account never existed or was recently closed by a company which is actually legitimate. I believe a wired money trail would have been more useful in exposing any illegal moves by anyone associated with Lt Gen Buratai.

A quick search through google revealed one interesting reference to Sigma III and the operations of The First Group (TFG) in Nigeria. A disgruntled Nigerian man Agbons Umweni Washington was sued to court by Sigma III sometime in July 2013 for breaching agreements in the contract he had signed with TFG real estate limited to continue payment for Unit 2212 of “TFG Marina” in Dubai. This prospective hotel project with 497 guest rooms and 251 luxurious suites was billed to commence in 2013 and completed sometime in 2016 and the staff of the company responsible for this ambitious project sought to woo prospective investors who would pay to own hotel rooms or suites based on the terms of their respective sales purchase agreements.

Mr Umweni who was referred to as a business man was introduced to the project and entered into an agreement in December 2012 at the Abuja office of the TFG real estate Ltd to pay N48.4million installmentally. Unit 2212 surely sounds like Unit 2711 of the Buratais which was quoted at N120million. This client was said to have been convinced to venture into this deal after a visit to Dubai where he saw signs of ground work ongoing at the site. He however developed cold feet on another visit about six months later on another visit when he did not see the same machinery at the site and this was compounded by the presence of a signpost which indicated a name change from TFG Marina to WYNDHAM Marina. He returned to the country and demanded for an explanation which he did not find satisfactory. He was sure that he did not plough N9.8million into a project with plenty consonants he could not pronounce and this was worsened by a Sales purchase agreement draft handed to him that was printed on a Sigma III letter head.

Mr Umweni demanded for a complete refund of his N9.8million but the company could only agree to a 70% refund. He rejected the deal and threatened to take the matter to the corruption fighting bodies in Nigeria. This prompted Sigma III Ltd and TFG real estate Ltd to sue him to court for breaching the details of his signed contract with them and refusing to pay his scheduled fees. According to the report, he refused to pay into a Dubai based account belonging to First Homes Worldwide LLC due to the perceived uncertainty and was instead provided with a Skye Bank account operated by TFG Real Estate the same account name on the alleged Buratai voucher.

The First Group is a British real estate developing company with many offices around the world. Some of their ambassadors are sports stars like Michael Owen, Kanu Nwankwo, Bryan Habana and Andriy Shevchenko. There is a story on their website from May 2013 where they reported a signed agreement between one of their subsidiaries in Dubai Sigma III Ltd and Wyndham Worldwide Corporation to develop and manage a hotel project which was called the Wyndham Dubai Marina, the name change which apparently got Mr Umweni confused. The Wyndham Corporation is reported to be actively involved in the development and operations of over 7,000 hotels globally. I do not know what transpired afterwards from that conflict but Mr Umweni seems like a ghost on what seems to be his LinkedIn and Facebook profiles; virtually inactive and a company attributed to him on LinkedIn leads to apparently nowhere.

I do not believe that an Army general can afford homes, hotel rooms or suites worth between 48million and 120million naira through honest means but I may be wrong. It just does not add up and should be investigated if that is the case. We do not quite know for certain the actual type of properties owned by the COAS in Dubai; I am not sure that the link to Sigma III is foolproof considering that the supplied documents by SR and the petitioners have significant inconsistencies. There is a chance that whatever Buratai owns in Dubai may have actually been obtained through honest means. However, this case should be investigated for its merits and demerits to ensure justice is served.

Some have attempted to use this story to justify or explain the enormous wealth which has been ascribed to the likes of Aydele Fayose and the former petroleum minister Diezani Allison Maduekwe. They ask why we can easily explain away Buratai owning property from his ‘meagre’ earnings as a soldier and refuse to understand that a whole second term governor based on his earnings can sit on over a billion naira and a former minister and Shell Executive Director can fly in private jets and build mansions anywhere she chooses. They fail to understand that Fayose is governor of one of the least endowned states in Nigeria and has been governor for approximately 5years cumulatively. How much is the salary of a governor when added to all the allowances such get? Diezani on the other hand commenced work with Shell in December 1992 after earning a Bachelor’s degree abroad. She did not become an Executive Director until April 2006 and she occupied this position until July 2007 when she was appointed the Minister of Transport. She waltzed through 3 different ministries over the next eight years and I am sure she was not earning Aliko Dangote’s monthly profits during that period. Many who have almost popped their carotids are those who would readily mock Sahara Reporters if they went after their beloved and sacred idols or benefactors. The same people who call Sahara Reporters and Channels TV APC sponsored media outfits are lauding the exploits of SR in seemingly exposing the corruption in President Buhari's government irrespective of whether the alleged vehicle scam and property purchase happened during President Jonathan's reign.

Some of these individuals have screamed from the rooftop while assuming that Buratai is a card carrying APC member worth ridiculing. The man is a professional soldier and if he is proven to have used army procurement money to purchase properties when he was not yet a Director in Army HQ; then he should be hung out to dry. There is no one greater than the Federal republic of Nigeria. In the meantime, I think the “Concerned soldiers and Officers” should consult Fayose and Lere to tweak their petition. It is just too porous.

http://thenationonlineng.net/firm-businessman-in-court-over-dubai-hotel-project/
http://www.thefirstgroup.com/en/developments/dubai-marina/
http://www.thefirstgroup.com/en/about-us/ambassadors/

TY Buratai 

PS: I later confirmed that the Skye Bank account is indeed operated by TFG real estate. (137/2016)