Tunde Ogunshakin
Tunde Ogunshakin is a police officer who has served the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) within and outside the Force. Before his current appointment as the commissioner of police in charge of the Special Fraud Unit (SFU), Ogunshakin was the former director of operation for both Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices and Other related Offences Commission (ICPC); deputy commissioner of police in charge of Info-Tech at the Force Headquarters, Abuja and assistant commissioner of police (ACP) in charge of Interpol among many others. In this interview with Senior Reporter, Tunde Opeseitan, he spoke on his journey into the Nigeria Police and efforts being put in place to transform the SFU.
How far have you been able to go in implementing the recommendations that were made in the last workshop organised by the SFU?
Well the insider abuse in banks was a challenging issue to the Nigerian economic system and so because of the challenges we are facing, we needed to collaborate with our counterpart in the United Kingdom to organise a workshop and happily it came with the assistance of some of the stakeholders namely Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigerian Deposit Insurance Commission (NDIC) and Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON). It was a successful workshop in which participants were drawn from all the banks, the SFU especially and then other anti-corruption agencies. Well, with the feelers we are having even from the banks, it is nice to say that the workshop was a huge success. And going with the trend now, most of the banks are willing and they have been coming around to give us information even about their officers in banks that are involved in this kind of issue and then our officers here are more equipped now to address issue of insider abuse in banks. So, most of the cases we have now, our officers really have the experience to investigate properly now and I can tell you that we have charged some of the suspects to court. So, if you look at that, then it is nice to say the workshop was a very successful one. Personally, I have benefitted a lot in terms of training. I was in Interpol and there, I was exposed to training both inside and outside. I have benefited tremendously in terms of training. I have traveled all over the world and I have been to conferences and all that, and I had always wished to be in a position to ensure that officers that work with me, also have this kind of exposure and benefit from all the trainings they can because if you are trained especially in emerging fraud and emerging method of fighting such criminality, that will make you to be a very strong, capable and efficient investigator. When I came in here as SFU CP, it was apparent that the officers were lacking in such training and so I key into the transformation agenda of the current Inspector General of Police on the need to train and retrain our officers and I am happy that our officers are very receptive to these trainings. Since my assumption of office, our officers go through trainings twice a week and even those officers that are not that versatile in terms of ICT, they have gone out to train themselves and that tells you that the culture of training and retraining is getting to the officers. In the global economic situation of today, you must be able to train yourself to the level that you will function perfectly and we have underscored the need for our officers to be highly efficient to investigate the emerging fraud that was not as rampant as before especially in cases of ICT and all that.
Between last year and now, the SFU, according to statistics, investigated about 600 cases and several billions of naira recovered. How are the recovered funds being administered?
We are recovering a lot of funds especially for complainants, who at times could be corporate bodies or individuals. So, when we recover these funds, we release to the complainants and then we ensure that the suspects in such cases are taken to court so that we don't just recover the funds but the suspects are also charged to court. We have done a lot of recovery on cases before us here and just recently, we recovered a large sum of money from a Chinese who duped a bank in his country and ran to Nigeria. We recovered the funds from the suspect and we were able to return the recovered funds to the Chinese Embassy in Nigeria for onward transmission to China and the Chinese authorities were very delighted to receive the recovered funds. So, in most cases, we return the recovered funds to the complainants and charge the suspects to court.
You recently complained that the absence of forensic laboratory is hampering your work, how do you think the problem can be resolved?
Yes, as to forensic investigation and just like I said earlier that the world is a dynamic and approach to crime is also global. And so, if we really want to fight crime, we must adopt a global approach and that will bring us to the issue of forensic investigation. When you look at the twin forces of modernization and telecommunication, you will come to a conclusion that for you to do a proper investigation, you must go forensic and when I was appointed as SFU CP and considering my background because I have worked in Interpol, EFCC and ICPC, I came to the realisation that we are lacking in forensic investigation and I felt that we should do something. But if you look at the government coming to assist in terms of funding, it has not been coming over the years so when I came in, I organised a stakeholders' forum because we needed to put in place forensic investigation lab and then fortunately I was able to put together a stakeholders' forum consisting of the embassies and high commissions in Nigeria and other stakeholders like the banks and other financial institutions. We all came together and I made the point clear to them that we needed to do something and they came to our rescue and that resulted in the building of our forensic investigation which is almost completed and I can tell you that the Canadian High Commission, the American Embassy and some other stakeholders have promised to equip the lab because it is not just about the structure, what is much more important is having the equipment and they are very expensive. We also need officers too that will work in that lab and just as I am talking to you now, our friends in the City of London Police are talking to their government and they promised that they will assist in the training of our officers that possibly will work in the forensic investigation lab and that is the key thing to me. Once the building is on and the equipment is there, we should not be lacking officers that will work there and those are the measures we are putting in place to resolve the issue.
There are insinuations that the recommendations your panel made against former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Charles Soludo, on the African Finance Corporation (AFC) issue were as a result of personal grudge you had against him for removing your cousin, Bisi Omoyeni, as Managing Director of Wema Bank. What is your story?
Yes, I was the chairman of the Federal Government panel on AFC and I think we should give credit to that panel; though, I headed it but the officers that worked with me were very diligent. They exhibited high degree of professionalism and we did all we were meant to do. As a matter of fact, by the time AFC was established, it was meant to be at par with the African Development Bank (ADB) and its headquarters was meant to be situated in Nigeria. When the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo approved the AFC, he did it with very good motive and if you go through our report, we even credited President Obasanjo and we gave applause to him for that novel idea and I still stand by that, and it was a good initiation of Governor Soludo then.
But then along the line, something happened. I don't have to go into details but all I will ask people to do is to go through our report and see all the recommendations and if somebody is coming out to say we made our recommendations on the basis that Soludo had a problem with Omoyeni, those saying that are very mischievous. First, Omoyeni is not my cousin but we are from Ikere Ekiti and I am proud to say that. As a matter of fact, by the time we were going through the AFC thing, I am not sure whether Omoyeni had a problem with either Soludo or CBN and I don't see how Omoyeni's issue with CBN will come to play on an issue that is very straight forward. You see, there were many attempts for us to compromise issue when we were carrying on the investigation into the AFC matter, but as an investigator, you are not allowed to come out open to even mention that people tried to influence your decision in a very critical issue that I was not just a member but the chairman of the panel of investigation. I can tell you that by the time we recovered the money, we went to America; we went to JP Morgan where the money was domiciled. JP Morgan was a banker to Nigeria. I led the team that went to England's equivalent of CBN and I met with the officers because a lot of allegations were made against Soludo and all that. We investigated the allegations and we later found out that some of the allegations were not true, but we located the fund in JP Morgan and we made recommendations, but when we were about to handover the report, it became apparent to us that some people were even trying to hijack the $485 million that we recovered and so in our recommendations, we wrote a letter covering the fund because we came to a conclusion that after recovering it, whosoever is going to touch it should be the lawful authority, and so we put it as part of our recommendations. We did all that because we had our suspicion as highly placed persons were coming and if we did not do what we did, we will not be sure of what will happen to the money that we recovered and that was what made us to recommend that government should stop participating in it and then we now said if government was to continue to be part of that venture and the money was going to be touched, certain process must be followed so as to save the fund. We then wrote a letter to JP Morgan and then gave them specific instruction on what to do if anybody attempt such and that the Federal Government of Nigeria should be aware of it. That is the story. You see, people don't have to like me but I believe strongly in what I do and if I have the conviction that anything I am doing is right, my practice is to go ahead not minding whose ox is gored. If you do this kind of work we do, you cannot expect everybody to like you but then I think those who mentioned that because somebody who is related to me was not being treated nicely would influence my decision, then they don't know me. If you go through that report, you will see that those saying that are jobbers who don't have serious thing to say. I have nothing personal against Soludo. To me, he is a very brilliant person; cerebral and very good, but when we have a case to do, we handle it and in this instance, we handled it to the best of our ability and I am not bordered if somebody is insinuating very wrongly that I did what I did because someone who is related to me had a problem with another person. Yes, as a chairman of that panel, I take responsibility for all that happened but there were other members and people can find out from them whether at any point in our meetings or in our minutes, anything came to play that suggest that we had a reason to deviate from the lay down requirement of what we were supposed to do. We did all that with the conviction that what we did was right. Whatever government did with our report was beyond our panel; our own is we were given a job, we were given terms of reference and we complied strictly with that. So, if anybody is writing or insinuating, I am sorry for them. For you to even know, when the issue was going on, Soludo's lawyer, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), is my first cousin. He is from Ikere Ekiti and Omoyeni is also from Ikere Ekiti, but he is not my cousin. So, if Chief Olanipekun is Soludo's lawyer and then he is my first cousin, who should I even help if I had wanted to be swayed by whatever? So, when people talk, you will find out that they don't know what they are talking about. Those that know me very well will tell you that I can stand on principle regardless of whether anybody is going to like it or not. I think that is the trait that I have from being an Ekiti man. We are very principled where I come from. We were trained and tutored to be principled and I will continue to uphold this tenet wherever or whenever I find myself in a position which integrity demands it. So, as far as that issue is concerned, I can tell you that I did out of conviction what was right and if I have to do it again, I will do exactly what I did.
A lot of people are of the opinion that security agencies in Nigeria have been overwhelmed by the Boko Haram issue and other security threats. Do you have any contrary view?
That is a sensitive issue but then I can tell you that at this time in the history of our nation, Nigeria, we have a security challenge that is massive. But what I can assure Nigerians is that we have an Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, that is capable of handling the challenges. As far as I am concerned, we cannot possibly have a better Inspector General to handle these security challenges. We are lucky to have someone that is very intelligent and very capable professionally. And so, in terms of the massive challenges we have, what I think the government can do is to possibly see how we can improve on the funding for the welfare of police men and security agencies generally to be able to confront these security challenges that we have. But I can tell you that a lot of police men are there and we need the society to have more confidence in the police and assist in giving out whatever information they have to the police. In all that however, I can assure you that the leadership of the Nigeria Police is capable of confronting the security challenges all we lack is not the human resources, not the will, determination of the police to address the challenges, but just the lack of equipment to work with. With my experience even here or wherever I have worked, I have found out that the Nigeria Police is one of the best in the world. I have experienced policing in UN peace keeping and we see how we operate there. Where I observed the peace keeping, I found out that we, the Nigeria Police were one of the best. Go and find out and it was because of the determination and the ' never say die' spirit of the average Nigerian to excel is so high. The only thing we are lacking is materials to work with. So, the government and people of Nigeria must address the issue. Why is it that in America every police division has the materials to work with? You see, if there is a crime somewhere, all they need to do is to connect via the materials they have and then the ground forces will interconnect and suspects arrested. In Nigeria, we are about 170 million and how many police stations do we have? Conservatively, we have the original 774 local governments and the question is how many police stations do we have in all the local governments? What is the budget of the whole police? Nigeria must spend more on security and the police must be more adequately equipped to be able to face these challenges. We should not just say police is not doing well; we must find out why the police are not doing well and invest more on security.
On a lighter mood, do you socialize?
Well I am a human being and I try as much as possible to keep friends that are of like mind. You know you live in a society and when you do the kind of work I do, you have to be careful about the kind of friends you keep. Even you as a journalist, you chose your friends and on that note, I can tell you that I chose my friends very carefully. Sometimes I try as much as possible to socialise but without doing anything to cast any doubt on my reputation and integrity. But I must also say that when you handle cases like these, you must have people calling and trying to influence you either positively or negatively, but then, it is really left for you to decide and know when to stop if you find out that your relationship with certain people is affecting the your job. As a matter of fact, you are right to stretch your hand, but within that freedom, there is a limit. I am not saying that you cannot have friends but the work we do is so important to the society that we must be careful of who we keep as friends.
What was it like at the department of History and Political Science at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in those days?
Laughs…. Well, we took pride being students of University of Ife because if you look at the students when we were there and even now, we went there at our very prime age. We were very young and because the university is an enclosure sort of and very far from the main road and so if you need to go to town whether you don't have a car or bike, it will be very difficult. We were lucky then the facilities in the university were working and it was a good way to really interact and interrelate with each other. What I am saying in essence is that whatever you wanted to do as a student, you do it in the campus. We don't go out often when we were there and so we made ourselves very comfortable. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we were always going out inside the campus to enjoy ourselves so to say and especially at the beginning of session and what we used to call "All Mighty June" when we had our exams. You have all the time to play around before June comes knocking and so in the months of May and June, you can't really socialise that much. But when it is the start of the session, we had our fun. We normally watched cinemas at the Oduduwa Hall. There was a place we used to call Channel 10, which was the Humanity Hall where when you don't have lectures, you see guys hanging around to discuss campus politics, hostel issues and current affairs. I stayed in almost all the hostels on campus namely Awolowo, Angola, Fajuyi and so on. In the halls, I was happy to be part of all those things we did as students and incidentally when I was in Ife, I never thought I could be a police man because it was the only profession we, as students of Ife, did not like. And so if anybody mentioned that he wants to be a police man, people will just be laughing at you and you can imagine that kind of insinuation. But then, I found myself now in the police and I am happy to be a police man and possibly if I have the chance again, I will possibly be a police man because I enjoy what I am doing. You see, anywhere in the world, police is not seen as an important job which is the key thing. You may not like it; you may not approve of what policemen are doing but you cannot say police is not an important job to the society and so like I am a police man, I am happy to do what I'm doing by trying to protect lives and property; trying to be part of the segment of the society that gives protection and save lives. I want to be seen as somebody who is part of correcting the ills in the society and this is the little way I am doing it and so I am happy to be a police officer.
