The Alliance for New Nigeria party (ANN) 2019 presidential candidate, Fela Durotoye, has recently shared a revealing account of how his steadfast commitment to integrity and ethical values helped him avoid potential trouble.
In a thought-provoking reflection, Durotoye recounted an incident where he was offered a lucrative contract to provide ethical leadership training across Nigeria. However, the offer came with a troubling request to inflate the invoice.
Despite the financial temptation, Durotoye stated that he stood firm in his commitment to ethical leadership, refusing to compromise his principles.
To his surprise, just three months later, four individuals were arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for embezzling 425 million Naira meant for the same ethical leadership initiative.
In a video seen online, Durotoye said: “A few years ago, I’ll not say how long, but it’s not this administration, it’s not last administration it’s a while ago let me leave it like that. I got a phone call and it happened to be a Man of God from Abuja who called me to say Fela, there’s an opportunity that I want you to explore, infact let me be clear with you, you have already gotten it.
“So I said okay, what is it about? He said we want to run a program called Unethical leadership and when we did some kind of vetting, we said we were looking for three things, number one we are looking for someone who has experience and expertise on ethical leadership, number two we were looking for someone who had the reputation of experience and expertise on ethical leadership, and the third one we were looking for somebody who had the capacity to run ethical leadership training across 774 local governments in 8 weeks.
“So the person must have an army of trainers that can train in 50 local governments at the same time on Monday and Tuesday, and those people will now move to another local government and train 50 so therefore in one week they would have trained 700 local governments.
“He said we know what you’ve been doing raising speakers, you have speakers corner, you have speakers connect we know all of these things, we know what you’ve been doing in the banking sector, we know you’re the only one that has all three, so please give us your invoice. So we went and I called my team together and said make sure everything is at cost, the pencil must be at cost, the bag the paper, everything.
“So they said what do we do as management team, I said No, this is for Nigeria, I’m not charging the management fee on it, so we put in a bill of 1.3 Billion at that time, three days later I get a call, congratulations Fela, you have been given the task but we looked at this costing and it’s most likely you did not put anything for yourself, I said No, I didn’t put anything for myself.
“He said ‘I told them in that meeting, Fela won’t put anything for himself’ so we decided to put something for you. So we’re going to put 700 million so you’d get 2 billion, but send us an invoice for 5 billion, and we need that invoice in the next three days before they close the account for the year. He said ‘what is it you don’t understand, send it in so we can quickly process it for you don’t worry it’s already allocated to you.’
“I said, but Sir I thought you said this thing is ethical leadership, and I said if we’re doing ethical leadership and we’re already inflating price then what are we teaching? He said ‘ Ahhh Fela please please, you know if you don’t do this thing, you know these people, they’ll just give it to one of their people who would not do any job but will still deliver, so it’s better it’s you that get it, I said No, the gift and the calling of the Lord is without repentance, but the gift of the Lord maketh rich and added no sorrow, he said there’s no sorrow to this. He said you have been doing well for Nigeria, it’s time for Nigeria to do well for You, I said No Sir, I’m sorry.
“Long story cut short, I had to turn of my phone for 3 days at one point, he was calling me every 30 minutes, at one point I turned off my phone. Pastor Poju what I didn’t realise was that three months later into the New Year, I saw on page four of a newspaper ‘ Four people in the Presidency arrested by EFCC for stealing 425 million Naira for ethical leadership program, now please listen to this ,none of you remember the names of those people even tho you saw the newspaper, do you know what they would have written ‘Durotoye and four others’, and if they had written that, I promise you I would not have been sitting on this chair several years later.
“What’s the point that I’m making, you have to get to the point where you value your values to the point when nobody can offer you anything. Only your values can make you turn down what looks like an opportunity to be corrupt”.
