Joys, tears in the eye of a Rivers lady

Onene Osila Obele-Oshoko

…How, again, Onene Osila’s island turned into back of a whale

If you are her friend and you meet Onene Osila Obele-Oshoko, a true Rivers lady, you will see smile play on her lips and face; joy in her eyes. As you tarry while exchanging pleasantries and recalling old times, you will find joy in her usual calm dark eyes. Then, you look deeper, you find glistening tears dancing around her eyeballs beneath the smiles. You will find a sad woman.

The tears behind her smiles may represent the pathetic situation of most Rivers-born professionals in recent years who answered the call from their state to leave their promising careers around the world to come home and help. Soon, the vicious wheel of terrible politics grinds and crushes them; going forward no, going back no.

That was how Onene Osila (as she is mostly called) left the banking industry where she was highly regarded as a top manager to answer the call from home, only to be messed up when the Pharaoh that knew Joseph left the scene.

She suffered, healed, and returned to Lagos where professional life has meaning, and rebuilt her career. Just then, another strong demand for her rare financial services came and she again heeded. Just one month after, she has been pushed off in the crude and muddy pathway between state of emergency and state of reality that now rule Rivers State.

Many may ask, what could make a Rivers girl smile and be sad at same time? A peep into her profile may help one to understand.

Background:

Onene Osila sees herself as a “disciplined, focused, and dependable professional achiever with a strong drive for building teams that deliver on organizational mandates.”

She has strong executive managerial background with senior level experience and cross-sector exposure, having an investigative mindset on process improvements with effective controls and fraud deterrence. Her robust appreciation of strategic management makes it possible for her to envision, build, and implement sophisticated plans that explicitly support key business needs.

The Eleme daughter was born at a very strange period in Nigeria; soon after the two military coups of 1966 that changed Nigeria’s fate and trajectory. She went to school when her mates were going to school, and went to the university like other well-brought up Rivers girls. A significant aspect was that she attended the famous Federal Government Girls’ College Benin City.

She went ahead to study Accounting at the then highly regarded but Nigeria’s pioneer University of Science and Technology (UST), now Rivers State University (RSU), before bagging (or still studying) many more certificates in Accounting, Finance and Law around global institutions including Babcock University, University of Liverpool London, Daystar Leadership Academy Lagos, ESUT Business School Lagos, etc.

She acquired rare expertise beyond academic excellence on Business Process Reengineering, Change Initiation and Management, Performance Management and Improvement, Fraud prevention, deterrence, investigation and detection; Due Diligence Consulting Services, Tax Management Administration, Project Management, Risk Management, Financial Systems Administration, Procurement, and above all Managing Crisis Situations and Trading Online & Offline.

The call from home:

Now, at a time her home state was reorganizing tax administration along the lines of what topmost experts such as Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru (FIRS 2004 to 2012), had done at the federal level, the then governor (Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi) inquired from the financial oracles if there were some Rivers sons and daughters that had such competences. That was when her name dropped alongside few others.

Onene Osila was poached from national assignments by Amaechi to come home and head a new Rivers State Internal Revenue Service (RIRS) that was now to operate like the FIRS). The proud Rivers girl (woman, anyway) answered the call from home. In one of those interviews those days, she said she was proud to be asked to come home and help.

The RIRS was just being transformed from a mere parastatal agency under the full bureaucracy answerable to the permanent secretary Ministry of Finance to the Commissioner and then to the Governor. By the work Josiah Olu, then chairman of the Rivers State House of Assembly Committee on Finance (about 2013 and 2014) did, the RIRS got a law making it autonomous. This gave two distinct features to the new RIRS: the chairman became executive and was to report to the Governor almost directly but through the Finance Commissioner; next, the RIRS was allotted 5% of its audited revenue of every year, which it would use to hire whoever it deemed fit to meet target, and to go after high networth individuals who actually hide their taxes. It was to also begin capture of the informal sector so they can now come into the tax net. This was expected to double the state’s monthly internally generated revenue (IGR) then of about N8bn toward between N16bn and N20bn.

The avowed target of the administration was to be able to execute all recurrent expenditures of the state including salaries without federal allocation. It also wanted IGR to fund at least 50% of its annual budgets. This was the journey to true federalism which Amaechi quietly pursued through revenue autonomy apparently as a first step. This shows how much the then governor needed a trusted hand in revenue generation management and financial processes especially issues of integrity and total absence of politics. Amaechi thought Osila Onene fitted into this bill, well.

The first challenge she was said to have encountered was that whereas they promised her free hand and to be a woman and boss of RIRS of her own, not to be tied to civil service bureaucracy, she was later told that the RIRS was yet to get its autonomy status and she must apply to first be absorbed into the Rivers State civil service to be able to serve as chairman of RIRS. She succumbed, and resigned fully from her employments elsewhere to avoid breaching the rule.

Soon, the Service secured the said autonomy which made it mandatory that having been engaged through Section 5, a chairman could only be removed through section 8 where the conditions for removal were stipulated, including need to have been found guilty through a transparent process. But, as soon as Amaechi left without installing a successor as next governor, the hostile takeover of the state between Amaechi and Nyesom Wike was believed to have made her the first victim. She was removed without allowing Section 8 to play out (no investigation, not found guilty, etc).

Next problem, because she was made to be engaged first as a civil servant (rank of director) she was expected by the rule to be posted back to the civil service to wait for another posting. This never happened, probably because the state operates without any law, rule, or system. The governor was the law, many said. It must be noted that the law that had allocated 5% to the RIRS was never seen to have been obeyed. The governors seemed to hand to the Service whatever they decided was good.

The traumatized Onene Osila, who seemed to know nothing about politics (subtle or overt), was said to have knocked on a few doors to find out what next. A few consoled her and gave her hopes. She waited forever; was she a civil servant or not? Should she relocate or hang on? This suspense lasted for years; no salary, no reassignment. Wike, too, left office. She was left just like that, not even severance package, not clarity on her status.

Read also: Rivers State is back in business – Investment promotion agency

Attractive performance outlay?

She may not have political connections but she seems to rely on an impressive performance record, even in her state at the RIRS where she had primary strategic, visionary, and operational oversight over the activities of the Board in implementing its mandate to be the significant driver of IGR for the State.

She is credited with reorientation of the agency through consistent training of staff and education of the public on tax matters. This she allegedly did to achieve voluntary compliance seen to be better and cheaper and safer than forced compliance. She tried to achieve perception and brand visibility of the RIRS, making it the strongest public service brand in Rivers State, and tried to strengthen the RIRS to become one of the most viable IGR mechanisms for the State Government.

She thinks she implemented control measures that drastically reduced fraud and leakages and enhanced the quantum of revenue collections for the State. It is not clear if all persons cherished this aspect of achievement, but her team put in place Fraud Policies and Code of Ethics with a strong tone at the top. Also, they implemented the automation of tax clearance certificate issuance as well as treasury receipts. Withholding tax credit notes were now issued on demand while existing backlog dating several years were cleared.

Her tenure birthed the PUSH Project, targeted at ensuring that taxpayers received efficient service to elicit self-compliance, preparatory to going into the informal sector. In summary, her team was said to have built credibility into the tax administration in Rivers State by ensuring that the RIRS was run professionally, devoid of any partisanship. This was sweet and bitter to different ears. Some next chairmen of the Service however tried to sustain some of these legacies, but none has won any autonomy, nor got to the level she got, it has been said.

New era joys and tears:

Sim Fubara, a core civil servant in the accounts section, and one of the very few doors that were understood to have opened a crack to console her when she was stranded, came to power. By this time, she had returned to Lagos to hustle, and then to set up now life.

Just when she was beginning to cruise again, another urgent but shrill call came from home; it was for her to come and head another finance-based institution (the Rivers State Micro Finance Agency) and reshape things. This too, was her area of competence, and home was calling.

Onene Osila sees herself as a highly self-driven professional; teachable, and one that employs a collaborative approach to engage, motivate, and encourage team development and growth.

She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Directors Nigeria (IoDN), Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), Certified Fraud Examiner, a graduate of Accountancy with Masters in Business Administration and Masters in Laws (International Business).

This is a Rivers girl who started her career pursuit in 1990, after her National Youth Service, with Peat Marwick Ani Ogunde (PMAO) & Co (Chartered Accountants) before joining the banking industry in 1991, now with over 20 years banking experience with 14 years at managerial level.

She had served as Chief Finance Officer (CFO) in the private sector with a trail of transformations; quite versed in both private and public management administration. She has a consistent track record of successfully delivering full lifecycle implementations to tight time scales and within budget.

Now, appointed the Managing Director of the Rivers State Micro Finance Agency (RIMA), she was said to have been asked to clean the books, strengthen operations along best practices since it is a finance agency which is not a lending agency.

Joys returned to her eyes. She was said to have gone quickly to work, looking through the books. As a fraud detection expert, she was said to have started asking questions. For instance, hints came out to the knowledge of business journalists that she was not comfortable with RIMA’s list of beneficiaries of loans. She was said to have wondered where RIMA got the power to give direct loans to individuals.

For instance, there is a rule that banks and authorised lending institutions belong to a body where they had access to all borrowers across board, according to sources. This means if any borrower failed to pay, he/she could be traced through that body. It is also a place that clears an intending borrow by seeing his or her debt profile across board. RIMA is said not to be a recognized lender and does not belong there. The fear from her becoming head of the place is said to be how RIMA would hunt down those who borrowed away its N4bn fund and have refused to repay.

As this and other things were said to be going on, she was removed with immediate effect.

Again, tears returned to Onene Osila’s eyes. Did she do wrong to accept to serve her state, again? Who did she offend? Agreed, it was Ibok Ekwe Ibas, the sole administrator, that fished her out through those that knew her, as is being said, but wjere was her offence?

Fubara returned only to boot her out, instead of reposting her. This seems to have reopened old questions and wounds of whether she was a civil servant or mere appointee. Also, are her appointments political or bureaucratic?

Governance ought to be smooth, just, and fair so as to create standards. Persons familiar with this matter say it was government that employed her in each of the situations. It is the duty of the state government to smoothen out the matter to reduce bruises as if to serve your state was a crime.

She is said to still be hanging around in Port Harcourt, not able to return to Lagos where she severed her career, again. She seems to be rendered hopeless; nether a Lagosian nor a Port Harcourt dweller, all because she trusted her government.

Various sources say Gov Fubara has been righting many wrongs especially those that had civil service involvement like this case. Fubara makes it loud that though he is an Opobo man, but that he sees himself an Eleme man also because he lived there and began his career there. That was why he said he repaired one key road in Eleme to link them to PH beside the East West Road.

The governor is regarded as a due process man and a good man. Many thus think that a Rivers girl cannot be wearing tears and pains about, just for being a Rivers girl. Her sympathisers say they are pleading.

Twice, the island she found and inhabited turned into the back of a whale, upturning her. Many wish her island could be restored.

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