The director-general of the Nigeria Copyright Commission(NCC),John Ohireime Asein, has been fingered for abuse of public office, after it was discovered that he grossly abused his office by keeping another employment and allegedly drew four months’ salary long after his retirement.
Asein,it was discovered, was the executive director of REPRONIG, a collective management organisation(CMO) regulated by the commission; a conflict of interest which clearly violates the Public Service Rules and runs counter to the code of conduct for public officers in the fifth schedule of the Nigerian Constitution.
In a letter dated February 7, 2020 and addressed to the governing board of the commission, the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), Copyright Commission Unit raised questions and sought clarifications on alleged Violation of section 1 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act regarding conflict of interest by concurrently holding positions of director-general of NCC and executive director of REPRONIG and another private organisation (Books and Gavel) one of which is a collective CMO regulated by the NCC and receipt of salaries and earnings from both jobs, receipt of four months unearned salaries worth over N2m after retirement from NCC in 2015.
While he was the executive director of REPRONIG, Asein dire thly derw from the organisation or used proxies.
On May 8 and 17, 2019, he recieved payments to the tune of N366,000.00 and N377,000.00, respectively.
According to the ‘Economic Confidential’, on June 11, 2019, a payment was made by a proxy, a staff of REPRONIG amounting to N150,000.00, On July 17, 2019 another payment of N359,000.00, July 23, 2019 a payment of N292,000.00 was received by him and July 26th 2019 another N304,000.00 was paid to him. August 9 and 27 2019 payments of N50,000.00 and N100,000 were earned by him from the same REPRONIG.
There were further payments to Asein from the same source on September 27, 2019 (N334,000.00) and September 30, 2019 (N302,000.00).
In October of the same year the proxy remitted the sum of N765,700.00 to him, rounding off the payments for 2019.
Asein is alleged to have failed to disclose funding received from French Government development agency (AFD) for audit of CMOs (AFD funding secured by September 2019) and subsequently wrote to the Minister of Finance by letter dated December 30, 2019 to demand N20m for a similar project.
Asein allegedly failed to implement the resolutions of the Governing Board of the commission since July 2019 and to seek its approval for transactions exceeding N5m.
Asein,a lawyer, must be aware that the rule of 17 (4) of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Lawyers of the Nigerian Bar Association stipulates that “…a lawyer shall not accept a proffered employment if the exercise of his independent professional judgment on behalf of a client will be or is likely to be adversely affected by differing interests.”
In the case of Legal Practitioners who are also public servants, this rule is restated in Sections 5 and 6 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act which provide that a public Officer should not put himself in a position where his personal interest conflict with his duties and responsibilities, while Sections 10 and 14 respectively provide that: “A public officer shall not be a member of or belong to or take part in any society the membership of which is incompatible with the functions or dignity of his office.”
When contacted by the Economic Confidential, Asein promised to not respond to allegations currently being handled by the supervising Ministry of Justice, as all queries in the past have been diligently attended to.
