THE SECRETARY AND CHAIRMAN ARE CULPABLE - YINKA FAROUNBI ESQ

Squib: There was this letter of yours dated 2nd May 2008 and published in our magazine in vol. 8 no 27 edition May 5 2008 edition, wherein you accused Mr. Beckely Abioye the NBA Ikeja Secretary and Mr. Niyi Idowu the NBA Ikeja chairman of tampering with some financial records of the branch in your care. Can you please throw more light on this issue.

Farounbi: My name is Yinka Farounbi. I have been a practicing lawyer since 1993. I am a member of the Nigerian Bar Association Ikeja Branch and a member of 2006/2008 executive as the financial secretary.
My duties as the financial secretary of the association entail the collection of bar dues, issuing receipts for money collected, collect money pledges and other donations to branch and passing same to the treasurer for onward transmission to the bank.
I delegated an aspect of the collection of bar dues to the bar clerk for ease of collecting. This had to do with my not being at the bar centre the whole of the day.
This end, I bought abut 3 exercise books for the bar clerk (Queen) to record bar dues collected by her and passed on to the treasurer. She dutifully carried this instruction and the treasurer signed on all the occasions he collected money from her.
The treasurer equally delegated the library hand to make the lodgment for him in the bank. There was no noticeable shortage from all the lodgments in the bank as evidenced by the pay-in bank tellers. I will like to state emphatically that it is not right for the Secretary General to ask me of the financial notebooks of the association made and kept by me for any year at all. Auditing of accounts as constitutionally laid down should be between the financial secretary, treasurer and auditor. Specifically, it is the auditor that is constitutionally empowered to demand for the financial notebooks from me.
If clarification is needed by the secretary general as to the financial standing of any intending candidate for any post in the elections, such needed information should only be forwarded to me for clarification. That is the standard procedure. Even if the auditor failed/neglected to so act, there is a constitutional provision to cater for it.
It is therefore overreaching and ultra-vires the powers of the secretary general to ask for the production of the financial notebooks from me. On the issue of rendering our account, all the financial officers will render account jointly to the house on 2nd June, 2008.
All the exco members ought to work in unison. The secretary general is the custodian of the register of members. If anybody claims to be a financial member and he is in doubt, he shall consult with me as to eligibility. I made serious allegations of tampering with the financial records against the chairman-Niyi Idowu and secretary general-Beckley Abioye. They took the financial notebooks forcefully from the bar clerk (Queen) for well over 6 months. The chairman handed over the receipt stubs and financial books to the secretary general on 27/04/2008 and then asked me to liaise with him (the secretary) by handing over the other financial records with me to the secretary. I refused because the chairman was wrong and I insisted that it was the secretary who must give back the records with him to me. The secretary eventually did.
On closer examination of the financial books surrendered by the secretary, I realised that some names have been smuggled into the financial notebooks. For example on page 12 of the financial note book of year 2006, precisely payment made on 9/10/2006 showed that the name of one Abiola Oketoki was smuggled into a space. She was alleged to have paid N1,000 which was neither paid to me nor to the bar clerk.
On page 16, payment made on 14/12/2006, Omodara Samson was smuggled into the records. He was alleged to have paid N1,000:00. In the original of which I made photocopies of and kept, it was only Odum Ekene that made payment on that day.
On page 18, payment made on 12/01/2007, the name of one Charles Biyi Oguntuga was smuggled into the list of those who paid. However, this name was not in the list before the chairman took the financial books from the bar clerk. These are the names I have discovered so far.
Curiously, these names are names of certain contestants in the forthcoming elections for one post or the other. I am still clarifying the position of the lodgments during this period and will be in a better position to show all the discrepancies when the statement of account is obtained by the treasurer.