Parent Affidavit - Memo Of Understanding The Parent: Fill & Download for Free

Quotes by L Ron Hubbard. L. Ron Hubbard - WikiquoteLiving is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same. The entire function of man is to survive. The outermost limit of endeavour is creative work. Anything less is too close to simple survival until death happens along. So I am engaged in striving to maintain equilibrium sufficient to at least realize survival in a way to astound the gods. I turned the thing up so it's up to me to survive in a big way . . . Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed.A letter to his wife Polly (October 1938), quoted in Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987), p. 81.God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible.A letter to his wife Polly (October 1938), quoted in Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987), p. 81.You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.Response to a question from the audience during a meeting of the Eastern Science Fiction Association on (7 November 1948), as quoted in a 1994 affidavit by Sam Moskowitz.This statement is similar or identical to several statements Hubbard is reported to have made to various individuals or groups in the 1940s. Variants include:The incident is stamped indelibly in my mind because of one statement that Ron Hubbard made. What led him to say what he did I can't recall — but in so many words Hubbard said: "I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is!"L. Ron Hubbard to Lloyd A. Eshbach, in 1949; as quoted by Eshbach in his autobiography Over My Shoulder: Reflections On A Science Fiction Era (1983) ISBN 1-880418-11-8 .Y'know, we're all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make real money, you gotta start a religion!As reported to Mike Jittlov by Theodore Sturgeon as a statement Hubbard made while at the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society clubhouse in the 1940s.Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own http://religion.As quoted in the Los Angeles Times (27 August 1978)Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own http://religion.As quoted in the article "Scientology: Anatomy of a Frightening Cult" by Eugene H. Methvin. Reader's Digest (May 1980).I always knew he was exceedingly anxious to hit big money — he used to say he thought the best way to do it would be to start a cult.Sam Merwin, Editor of Thrilling Science Fiction magazine Winter of 1946-47; quoted in Bare-Faced Messiah, The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987) by Russell MillerWhenever he was talking about being hard up he often used to say that he thought the easiest way to make money would be to start a religion.Neison Himmel, briefly a roommate of Hubbard in Pasadena during the fall of 1945, in a 1986 interview, quoted in Bare-Faced Messiah, The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987) by Russell Miller.Benzedrine often helps a case run."The Intensive Processing Procedure" (1950); "Run a case" = administer Dianetics or Scientology procedures to someone.Scientology is the only specific (cure) for radiation (atomic bomb) burns.All About Radiation (1952) p. 109.It was my responsibility that this world got itself an atom bomb, because there were only a handful of nuclear physicists in the thirties — only a handful. And we were all beating the desk and saying "How wonderful it will be if we discover atomic fission."Dianetics (1952).You are only three or four hours from taking your glasses off for keeps."Eyesight and glasses" in Dianetic Auditor's Bulletin Vol. 2, No. 7, (January 1952).THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.Lecture: "Off the Time Track" (June 1952) as quoted in Journal of Scientology issue 18-G, reprinted in Technical Volumes of Dianetics & Scientology Vol. 1, p. 418.Rate of change is this mathematics known as Calculus. … Now I hope you understand this, because I've never been able to make head nor tail of it. It must be some sort of a Black Magic operation, started out by the Luce cult — some immoral people who are operating up in New York City, Rockefeller Plaza — been thoroughly condemned by the whole society. Anyway, their rate-of-change theory — I've never seen any use for that mathematics, by the way — I love that mathematics, because it — I asked an engineer, one time, who was in his 6th year of engineering, if he'd ever used Calculus, and he told me yeah, once, once I did, he said. When did you use it? And he said I used it once. Let me see, what did you use it on? Oh yeah. Something on the rate-of-change of steam particles in boilers. And then we went out and tested it and found the answer was wrong.Philadelphia Doctorate Course, Tape #58 (November 1952).This is useful knowledge. With it the blind again see, the lame walk, the ill recover, the insane become sane and the sane become saner. By its use the thousand abilities Man has sought to recover become his once more.On Scientology in Scientology: A History Of Man (1952).Of all the ills of man which can be successfully processed by Scientology, arthritis ranks near the top. In skilled hands, this ailment, though misunderstood and dreaded in the past, already has begun to become history. Twenty-five hours of Scientology by an auditor who fairly understands how to process arthritis can be said to produce an invariable alleviation of the condition. Some cases, even severe ones, have responded in as little as two hours of processing, according to reports from auditors in the field.Journal of Scientology Issue 1-G, (1952).Here on Earth there was undoubtedly a Christ. One of the reasons he swept in so suddenly and he would go forward so hard is, he had a good assist in back of him in terms of an implant.Philadelphia Doctorate Courses, lecture 24 (1952).Leukemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukemia had been treated successfully by Dianetics after medicine had traditionally given up. The source of leukemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase 'It turns my blood to water.'Journal of Scientology Issue 15-G (1953).there is no war not based on lies,there is no infamy alive withoutits kindred kin, deceit."There Is No Compromise With Truth" ( a poem written in 1953 or 1954).You are a spirit, then,you Man, and not a Manat all.You are a spirit and you dwellwithin the guts of mortal beast."There Is No Compromise With Truth" ( a poem written in 1953 or 1954).You are a spirit, thena god,full capableof making spaceand energy and timeand all things well.And there you crouch, forgottento yourself and hidden fromthe eyes of allpretending there to bea beastthat walks and eats and dies."There Is No Compromise With Truth" ( a poem written in 1953 or 1954).Scientology … is not a religion.The Creation Of Human Ability (1954), p. 251 ISBN 0884044300Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow.The Creation Of Human Ability (1954).The one impulse in man which cannot be erased is his impulse toward freedom, his impulse toward sanity, toward higher levels of attainment in all of his endeavors.Dianetics 55! (1954).The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.A Manual on the Dissemination of Material (1955).You can get a much better fee — I tell you as auditors quite frankly — it's much easier to get a great deal of money out of somebody who's on a down spiral into becoming MEST than it is to get money out of somebody who is going on an up spiral toward becoming theta."Philadelphia Doctorate Course" #15 (1952).There are conditions worse than being unable to see, and that is imagining one sees.Lecture, Scientology and Effective Knowledge (15 July 1957).When we need somebody haunted we investigate … When we investigate we do so noisily always.Manual Of Justice (1959).People attack Scientology, I never forget it, always even the score. People attack auditors, or staff, or organizations, or me. I never forget until the slate is clear.Manual Of Justice (1959).So we listen. We add up associations of people with people. When a push against Scientology starts somewhere, we go over the people involved and weed them out. Push vanishes.Manual Of Justice (1959).Not smoking enough will cause lung cancer! If anybody is getting a cancerous activity in the lung, the probabilities are that it's radiation dosage coupled with the fact that he smokes. And what it does is start to run out the radiation dosage, don't you see.Saint Hill Special Briefing Course 35 (19 July 1961).The subject of philosophy is very ancient. The word means: "The love, study or pursuit of wisdom, or of knowledge of things and their causes, whether theoretical or practical."All we know of science or of religion comes from philosophy. It lies behind and above all other knowledge we have or use.My Philosophy (1965).I have lived no cloistered life and hold in contempt the wise man who has not lived and the scholar who will not share. There have been many wiser men than I, but few have traveled as much road. I have seen life from the top down and the bottom up. I know how it looks both ways. And I know there is wisdom and that there is hope.My Philosophy (1965).A psychiatrist today has the power to (1) take a fancy to a woman (2) lead her to take wild treatment as a joke (3) drug and shock her to temporary insanity (4) incarnate [sic] her (5) use her sexually (6) sterilize her to prevent conception (7) kill her by a brain operation to prevent disclosure. And all with no fear of reprisal. Yet it is rape and murder… We want at least one bad mark on every psychiatrist in England, a murder, an assault, or a rape or more than one… This is Project Psychiatry. We will remove them.Confidential memo "Project Psychiatry" (22 February 1966).It is all very well to sit back and hope for "the best in this best of all possible worlds" but it's the course of personal and national suicide.Unless there is a vast alteration in man's civilization as it stumbles along today, man will not be here very long and none of us.Times must change."Times Must Change" in Ability # 179 (20 March 1966).Man is sick and nations have gone mad.You would not even tolerate for one moment the conduct in an individual that is commonplace in the acts of some nations. You would lock up such a person."Times Must Change" in Ability # 179 (20 March 1966).In all the broad Universe there is no other hope for Man than ourselves."Ron's Journal" (1967).I'm drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys.Letter to his wife (1967) as quoted in L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? (1989) by Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr (Ronald DeWolfe).Certainty, not data, is knowledge.The Factors (1967).Anyway, Everyman is then shown to have been crucified so don't think that it's an accident that this crucifixion, they found out that this applied. Somebody somewhere on this planet, back about 600 BC, found some pieces of R6, and I don't know how they found it, either by watching madmen or something, but since that time they have used it and it became what is known as Christianity. The man on the Cross. There was no Christ. But the man on the cross is shown as Everyman. So of course each person seeing a crucified man, has an immediate feeling of sympathy for this man. Therefore you get many PCs who says they are Christ. Now, there's two reasons for that, one is the Roman Empire was prone to crucify people, so a person can have been crucified, but in R6 he is shown as crucified."Assists" lecture, #10 in the confidential Class VIII series of lectures (3 October 1968).Our organizations are friendly. They are only here to help you."Dianetic Contract" (23 May 1969).I set out to try to help my fellow man and to do what little I could to make the world a better place."Why Feel Guilty?" (1969).Advanced Courses are the most valuable service on the planet. Life insurance, houses, cars, stocks, bonds, college savings, all are transitory and impermanent … There is nothing to compare with Advanced Courses. They are infinitely valuable and transcend time itself.On his Operating Thetan Courses, in Flag Mission Order 375 (1970).Despite the amount of suffering, pain, misery, sorrow and travail which can exist in life, the reason for existence is the same reason as one has to play a game — interest, contest, activity and possession. The truth of this assertion is established by an observation of the elements of games and then applying these elements to life itself.Scientology : The Fundamentals of Thought (1973).That stupid fucking kid! That stupid fucking kid! Look what he's done to me!After learning of his son Quentin Hubbard's suicide attempt in 1976, as quoted in Bare-Faced Messiah : The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987), p. 344; Quentin died a couple of weeks later, without ever regaining consciousness.Scientology is used to increase spiritual freedom, intelligence, ability and to produce immortality.Dianetics And Scientology Technical Dictionary (1975); 1987 edition, p. 370."Man," said Terl, "is an endangered species."Battlefield Earth (1982) Ch 1.Scientology means scio, knowing in the fullest sense of the word, and logos, study. In itself the word means knowing how to know. Scientology is a 'route,' a way, rather than a dissertation or assertive body of knowledge. Through its drills and studies one may find the truth for himself. The technology is therefore not expounded as something to believe, but something to do.The Basic Dictionary of Dianetics and Scientology (1988), p. 34.Happiness and strength endure only in the absence of hate. To hate alone is the road to disaster. To love is the road to strength. To love in spite of all is the secret of greatness. And may very well be the greatest secret in this universe.A New Slant on Life (1998).To be happy, one only must be able to confront, which is to say, experience, those things that are. Unhappiness is only this: the inability to confront that which is.A New Slant on Life (1998).On the day when we can fully trust each other, there will be peace on Earth.A New Slant on Life (1998).Oh yes! The one man in the world who never believes he's mad is the madman.In answer to the question as to whether he ever thought he might be quite mad. Granada Television documentary on Scientology.

Short answer is A Resounding No.You adopt for yourself and to give a child a home.I had 4 natural children and due to a “accident of birth" wound up having a hysterectomy at age 27. About 2 hours after my son's emergency delivery At Home Which Was NOT Planned, and myself with the child were rushed 4 blocks to the hospital by my cousins who came for supper and were helping with clean up, my uterus was expelled by my body. They were already having trouble stopping the blood flow and had given me 3 pints of blood. After the expulsion of my uterus they knew the “WHY". My uterus had already detached and being the late 70′s most Ob-Gyn's had little experience beyond text book presentations.Fast forward my life to the early 1980′s I am remarried and he knew there would be no “biological" children. Mid 80′s approach. I am working in an attorneys office where one attorney does adoptions and state placement of adoptive children. My spouse and I had decided to try to adopt because of my sheer handling of hundreds of cases a year through just one agency that I can not name for obvious reasons. It was “our jobs" to vet adoptive and foster parents.One case came in 3 times in 2 years first with 2 children the last time was with 3 children. The last child was barely 3 weeks old. The trouble arose while trying to attempt to place three children together . Everyone “wanted the baby", of course. Who doesn't want a little 3 week baby they can oohhh and aahhh over and mould to their family dynamics? Everyone who is wanting to adopt, that's who.But there was resistance to the placement of the 3 year old girl who wasn't potty trained and her 4 and a half year old brother who had discipline problems. The mother apparently had a revolving door policy with the two fathers of her children and a third boyfriend. She'd break up with one then emplore the next child's father to “take her back, it will be different this time"- in reality not so much. She got on DHS/CPS’s radar. So she turned to her church for intercession but given her history it was a case of “too little, too late". The church turned to our office because one of the attorneys was a member of the church. He in turned asked the main adoption “specialist placement attorney" to take on the case. There were 8 attorneys in the office but because I worked for DHS/CPS at one point because that was what I got my degree for, to “help children and families in crisis". However, the places I worked were more “political than proactive" in their removal and placements. I was going to school to become an attorney and due to my prior education I was able to c.l.e.e.p. test on alot of pre requsites.I decided to become an independant child advocate which wasn't a “real thing" at the time. This was BEFORE C.A.S.A, Native American C.A.S.A. and other organizations I started because there was a dire NEED for someone to knock a hole in the facade of the agencies that the courts took as their “studies and findings “ as the gospel truth. I however, had “insider knowledge". Each placement the placement “family" gets a check from the placing agency. The placing agency gets reimbursement from the state (because in the beginning it is county money), the state gets reimbursement from the federal agencies, and the feds get reimbursements from “charitable agencie(s)— sometimes as many as 4 or 5. I remembered and had PROOF of my stupidvisors “requiring" me to send reimbursement vouchers for the same cases to the state, federal, and as many as 5 other private agencies for the SAME cases. As the “requesting" personnel, I got verification letters sometimes with memo “find check for $XXXX.XX amount to cover case number 1,2345. Upon clearance of the check we will mark the reimbursement file closed. Sometimes more often than not we received thousands of dollars above what was actually given to and for the family through foodstamps, AFDC payments, Sect 8 housing allocations, medicare, clothing vouchers, food vouchers through food banks and MORE. People don't realize how many agencies have their finger in the pie. I resigned because “fraud" came to mind when I saw my files.Anyway I applied to this law office as a “general office manager", and wound up typing most all of the pleadings for all 8 attorneys. The “adootion/ placement” attorney took a special interest due to my former emplyment with placing, interviewing potential housing situations, and more from working with DHS/CPS. She felt I was inherienty qualified to help navigate their waters for a better outcome. Which proved to be completely true. I did have a valuable skill set. Fast forward to the 3 children. I approached my church for help in placing the children. The attorney decided to place the baby with MY family and the judge APPROVED it because he KNEW me, my husband who adopted my children(wasn't hard to terminate my ex husband's rights due to his “criminal past", even beating me about the “head and face, placing Jane Doe in a coma thereby placing her children at risk of becoming orphans". So we got “Baby Jessica". We had her for 3 years(before I started the work, due to our situation to change the law, which WAS changed and rewritten or an addendum was enacted). Oklahoma law at the time stated “ a biological parent has the right to file for a reevaluation of the adoption of their children with an immediate revocation of all proceedings for adoption within 3 years of placement for any reason and ask for a reevaluation of the placement"- which SHE did just 24 hours before our adoption would become final. She got supervised visitation while new home studies were ordered, interviews with our friends, relatives with background checks into EVERYONE in our family who came in contact with “baby Jessica", our chuch family, employers, our finances, our mortgages, credit scores, our credit history, EVERYTHING. Even interviewing our children, my husbands soccer “kids and families (he coached two soccer teams girls under 10 & girls under 12 plus was our daughters training coach for Olympic Development)— she was suppose to be on Team USA for the 1996 Women's Soccer Team. They(her & her attorney) tried to tear our family apart internally and externally. Even trying to file a formal grievance with the Bar Association against my employer/attorney which went nowhere. They even tried filing a lawsuit against us attaching our house, freezing our bank accounts, and an attempted garnishment of our wages WITHOUT a court order giving them the rights to do so. We found out because the bank got the “Notification of Garnishment but no court order attached with a affidavit of a court order". There are 7 steps to garnishment in our state. The skipped everything. They never filed a case. They must have pulled that out of their arses trying to intimindate us. This all went against them in court.She gets visitation wit Baby Jessica one last time. Our litlle girl didn't understand about why she was having to see “that “kazy” woman, Mama. You say she give “birf” to me but I don't “unerstan” why I “haft" to see her. I “unerstan" I don't come outta your body like women at the docter office but the paper sez I am your and daddy's baby girl. Why does that make me haft to go see her?”We tried to get her to understand but she just couldn't. Then on that last visit I think bio mom knew she was losing and had lost because at the preliminary hearing on Wednesday before her last visit she knew the baby wanted to go to the bathroom. She asked the visitation facilitator if she could “take her to the bathroom one last time by herself.” We were at the courthouse full of deputies who “knew what was going on”. That WOMAN waltzed out of the couthouse with our little girl actually made it out of state. Now realize this is before the U.C.C.J.A.(UNIFORM CHILD CUSTODY JURISDICTION ACT) this ensures IF you have custody of your child in ONE place and jurisdiction ALL other states and jurisdictions MUST recognize the right of the jurisdictional court and the parents and enforce the jurisdiction and findings of the origin of the court order of the original presiding court.” She took our child to California where the courts of that state didn't even recognize the rights of other courts with in their own state!!. I wound up travelling to California and filing my papers there, winning in their courts.Perfecting the order was another thing. She was ordered to bring “Baby Jessica” back to the courthouse by 5:30p.m. she did not. It took California another 18 months to catch up with her because California turned it over to the Feds as a kidnapping. At this point she had our adopted child a little over 21 months. She got caught because her mom still lived in a little town in our state but in another county only 25 miles from our house. The feds filed a fugitive warrant and made her mother a “person of interest". Unknown to us she had epilepsy and needed medication. It turned out she was having her mother get her medication at a pharmacy here and sending it to her in California. When her mom became a person of interest they flagged her social security number. She was a nurse and her buying epilepsy medicine was a red flag moment for them. She couldn't be licensed with the severity level of the meds she had purchased. The biomom's epilepsy wasn't even presented as a portion as to why the children had been removed. We found out portions of the removal file had been “redacted as privileged medical records". To my knowledge any medical reasons for removal were given to potential adoptive parents as being relevant to the health of their potential adoptive children.After explaining all of this you need to KNOW you are willing to walk through fire for that adoption for the child NOT as a plaything for your child. A biological child that might not appreciate your endeavors later on. As I think I stated earlier, check some of my other Quora answers about adoption. I was adopted and my father was wonderful. I had a sister who was envious of me my whole life and she was adopted AFTER me. Adopt a child for the child's sake and for your family as a whole.

On the night of Friday June 7, 2013, a pre-wedding party was in progress at the Cavalli Club – named after the renowned Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli – within the 5-star luxury Fairmont Hotel in Dubai. There was champagne in abundance and some of the performers on ground for the all-night gig included DJ Jimmy Jatt, leading comedian, Basketmouth, singer Wizkid and rapper Naeto C. It was the summer party to be at.The next day, the wedding proper held at the JW Marriot Marquis Hotel on the same street. Most of the floors at the hotel and the nearby Mirage Palace were occupied by the over 300 guests who had flown in for the wedding from Nigeria to attend. Over 40 private jets were buzzing in and out of the United Arab Emirates with sitting governors, senators, traditional rulers, government officials, politicians and businessmen.The entire weekend was, as tabloids will call it, awash with pomp and pageantry. The groom was Oluwatosin Omokore, first son of Olajide Omokore, a maverick oil trader; and his bride was Faiza Fari, first daughter of Abdulkadir Fari, then Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum Resources. Encomium Magazine reported that souvenirs at the wedding rumoured to have cost an estimated $8 million (N1.2 billion using the exchange rate at the time), included the Blackberry Q10 released in January of that year, other smartphones, Bang & Olufsen luxury speakers.In the aftermath, the then Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, acting on the recommendation of his petroleum minister and Mr. Fari’s boss, Diezani Alison-Madueke,suspended and later redeployed the father of the bride to another parastatal. His accounts were also reportedly frozen by the Economic & Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. An insider at the ministry told The Nation newspaper that the wedding was deemed too lavish for a civil servant to fund and that in allowing his daughter marry the son of a major player in his sector, Mr. Musa had triggered a conflict of interest.In reality, the wedding had been primarily funded by Mr. Omokore who understandably spared no cost to give his first son the gift of a good wedding. Mr. Fari who reportedly had been a little too strict in demanding due process on some deals relating to marginal oilfields, was simply the sacrificial lamb who had to go for delaying Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s desires. He was one of many in a revolving door policy that saw five group managing directors and several permanent secretaries exit the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in the five years of Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s tenure.Back in May 2010, the death of Umaru Musa Yar’adua precipitated the ascension of Goodluck Jonathan as Nigeria’s president. There was pressure on him from his kinsmen and others within the enclave of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, to run for the 2011 elections. It was only expedient to turn to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, a major source of election funding for incumbents since the return of democracy in 1999.To ensure a smooth process, Rilwanu Lukman, the incumbent minister who favoured a restructuring of NNPC into a full commercial entity, was replaced with Diezani Alison-Madueke in a cabinet reshuffle. Mrs. Alison-Madueke eventually became like an unofficial prime minister. From then till May 2015 when the Muhammadu Buhari presidency took over; anyone that stood in her way was removed either by her personally or the presidency acting on her recommendations.In an era where Nigeria earned over N51 trillion from oil and the commodity price peaked at $112 per barrel, it was the best of times to have the listening ears of the president and the discretionary powers of an oil minister as enshrined in the Petroleum Act of 1969. In that five-year period, Mrs. Alison-Madueke, whose name means ‘look before you leap’ in her native Ijaw, leapt to unbelievable levels of immense influence and the accompanying affluence.DIEZANI’S CHILDHOODBorn Diezani Kogbeni Agama in the city of Port Harcourt two months after Nigeria’s independence, the young girl had a decent childhood as the third of six children. Her father Frederick Agama – had a distinguished career at Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) as a management executive before retiring to become a traditional ruler of the Epie-Atissa Clan in Yenaka, Bayelsa State. Her mother, Beatrice Agama, is a retired schoolteacher. Though her parents were not as wealthy as rumoured, they lived a decent life by all standards. She grew up at the Shell residential camp in Rumuomasi, Port Harcourt and schooled in Warri, Port Harcourt and Mubi.An intervention from her maternal grandfather N. K. Porbeni, a renowned Ijaw chief from Delta State led her to study architecture rather than the creative arts. “He travelled all the way from Warri [to the UK] to tell me in no uncertain terms that my father hadn’t spent all that money on my education for me to study Fine Art”, she said in a 2007 interview.Mrs. Alison-Maueke began her architecture training in the UK. It is unclear why she abandoned her studies in the UK, but she later moved to the United States to do a 5-year architecture course at Howard University. She graduated in 1992. Right after her graduation from Howard, she was employed by SPDC and would continue to go through the ranks, heading strategy and planning team handling its joint ventures with the NNPC. By this time, she was married to a former military governor of Imo and Enugu State, Alison Madueke.In 2006, she was appointed Executive Director, Facilities, becoming the company’s first female Nigerian director in its entire history. Ann Pickard, the controversial American who headed Shell’s operations in Nigeria from 2005-2010 fast-tracked her from mid-level executive, singling out her and other promising young women for top roles. Perhaps Ms. Pickard, believed to have placed moles in the Nigerian government –according to US diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks – and described as “having a willingness to manipulate every available political angle to further the company’s interests”, saw a reflection of herself in the younger woman.While at Shell, she was rumoured to be involved in contract racketeering and it was not uncommon to see staff in the corridor whispering about her dirty deals during lunch breaks. “The Business Integrity Department takes time to act”, an insider in Shell Nigeria revealed on the condition of anonymity, because the company strictly forbids unauthorised persons from talking to the media. “It can be tracking an executive for years, so it would have caught up on her activities sooner or later. She got away with it because she was ED for just over a year.”In July 2007, she was named Minister of Transport. Her tenure was brief and uneventful save for when she wept openly in August that year while inspecting a bad road. Between December 2008 and March 2010, she was heading the Ministry of Mines & Steel Development.During her time in the Ministry of Mines & Steel Development, it funded ‘Hollywood Glamour Collection’, a new limited-edition collection of Nigerian gold and gemstone jewelry by the popular jeweler Chris Aire. The collection was unveiled at an exclusive event in Beverly Hills, California on April 7, 2010, barely hours after Mrs. Alison-Madueke had been moved to the petroleum ministry. In the months after, Mr. Aire registered new companies for the sole purpose of being awarded questionable contracts to handle crude lifting, earning over an estimated $30,000 daily.Her royal heritage, love for jewellery, style and the finer things of life inevitably drew swift comparisons with the late Princess Diana of Great Britain. In time, friends, well-wishers and hangers-on began to call her Princess Di.THE MENOne of these hangers-on was Donald Chidi Amamgbo, the lawyer who reportedly became her lover for a while when they met at Howard. Usually described by the Nigerian press as her cousin, he hails from Imo State, not Bayelsa and runs a thriving U.S.-based legal practice, Amamgbo & Associates. In 2012, he was put on probation by the state bar of California for misconduct.When government appointees and politicians in general assume office, friends, well-wishers, government contractors and stakeholders in their specific industry find ways to contact them through their network, sending unsolicited gifts to them and their relatives and taking out pages in the newspapers for congratulatory advertorials.“When someone sends you a $10,000 watch here or expensive jewellery there with no favours asked, you have to call one day to say thanks and have the person visit”, said a former staff of the ministry, who asked not to be named because he still works for the government and has not been permitted to talk to the press. “Or your daughter calls from Dubai that an unknown person paid her tuition for two years and sublet an apartment for her. Can you say no? Even the Bible says it that ‘A man’s gift maketh a way for him’.”No one knows for sure which gifts came to Mrs. Alison-Madueke from some of the men at the centre of the storm in her world today. But they worked regardless because they became her close associates soon enough. There was Kola Aluko, an oil trader seeking a big break; Mr. Omokore, a shipping magnate looking to diversify and swell his fortune. There were also the fronts and middlemen, Benedict Peters and Walter Wagbatsoma.One of the many billionaire conquests of supermodel Naomi Campbell, Mr. Aluko was born and bred in Lagos as one of the nine children of Akanni Aluko, a geologist and popular traditional chief in Ilesha, Osun State. His first reported stint in the oil business was in 1995, after years of wandering through the pharmaceutics and automobile industries, when he cofounded Besse Oil, an oil trading firm. By the mid-2000s, one of his serial companies, Exoro Energy International merged with a partner firm, Weatherford, to become Seven Energy. It was run by Aluko who had one per cent equity, alongside Mr. Omokore and a third man, Phillip Ihenacho.Kogi-born Mr. Omokore, who was given the title of Elegbe of Egbe in his hometown in October 2014 for his commitment to his town, was an affiliate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) from state to national level. As a government financier, he was rewarded with waivers and mega contracts from agriculture to oil & gas.From time to time, there were contingency bailouts requested by members of the inner caucus of government. After the 2012 flooding disaster, he donated N50 million to the victims.In February 2014, Lamido Sanusi, then governor of the central bank was suspended by Mr. Jonathan after a controversial statement about missing $20 billion in crude oil earnings. According to an insider in the oil & gas sector who did not want to be identified due to his current position, Mr. Omokore allegedly doled out $200,000 to a number of local journalists to begin a campaign against the outspoken central bank governor; Mr. Jonathan had apparently fallen for the bait and wanted the pressure off his beloved minister.In 2010, Shell was plagued with a lot of issues in its onshore operations. Oil spills across the Niger Delta had gotten it into a lot of legal tussles; its goodwill with the host communities had been on a decline since the days of slain environmental activist, Ken Saro Wiwa in the 1990s; militants had wreaked considerable havoc on its asset causing countless force majeures; the government was seeking to get more local marginal field operators out onshore. It has gone on a large-scale divesting spree since then. That same year, Shell fixed one of the major pipelines in the country – the 97 kilometre-long Nembe Creek Trunkline passing through 14 oil pumping stations – for $1.1 billion. By November 2013, it was on the market.The company went ahead then to divest its stake (45 per cent) in asset held in joint venture partnership with NNPC which held the remainder (55 per cent) on behalf of the Nigerian government, and focus on the less ‘dramatic’ offshore fields. The divested fields were the OMLs 4, 26, 30, 34, 38, 40, 41 and 42 and Shell sold them to indigenous operators, raking in a total $2.3 billion.Meanwhile NNPC transferred its shares to one of its many loss-making subsidiaries, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, for $1.8 billion as valued by the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR. Till date, over $1.7 billion is outstanding as only $100m has been remitted to NNPC which wholly owns it.On September 16, 2011, a Strategic Alliance Agreement (SAA) was signed between the NPDC and Septa Energy, a subsidiary of Seven Energy for OMLs 4, 38 and 41. Another SAA was signed with Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts (AEDC) Ltd for OMLs 30 and 34. These companies were registered in tax havens like the British Virgin Islands and in the United Kingdom, limiting the revenue payable to the Nigerian government in form of taxes.The contracts were awarded by single-source procurement, in clear violation of Nigeria’s Public Procurement Act which stipulates that bids be subject to public tender and competitive. Mrs Alison-Madueke also contravened a guideline under the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act 2010 that mandated companies wanting to lift Nigerian crude to show records of involvement in the industry in the preceding ten years.SAAs are usually signed between two or more companies for a number of reasons including collaborating to augment technical expertise, meet capital requirement or reduce high costs of operation. NNPC adopted this approach to meet the huge capital requirement for cash call and lack of required skill and manpower at the corporation.According to the terms of the SAAs, the partner company provides the capital outlay required to lift crude in the assets supplied by the NPDC as well as non-refundable entry fees of $0.30 per barrel and $0.010/mcf, 70 days after the start of exploration activity. It was to recoup its investment by lifting crude. Quite interestingly, another requirement was that the collaborating firm pay a fixed sum of $350,000 per asset annually for five years to facilitate the training of NPDC staff. This came to $1.4 million per year and Atlantic Energy never paid up.Till date, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is pursuing Atlantic Energy to get its tax returns. And while the NNPC has moved to terminate the SAAs so it can get new partners who will pay as at when due, a court order obtained in October 2016 by Seven Energy, may be restraining it from doing so.“NPDC has till date paid only $100m for those eight OMLs but is still enjoying the benefits of an owner”, says Waziri Adio, executive secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) which tracks revenues accruing to government.An alternate commercial valuation byPricewaterhouseCoopers in 2015 took Shell’s divested assets into consideration and roughly estimated these eight assets to be worth $3.4 billion in total.“NPDC brought them on as partners because they are supposed to have financial capacity and technical capacity even though the assumption is that NPDC itself has financial and technical capacity to manage the assets”, Adio explains. “These firms had neither and the same assets were used in raising the money. What stops NPDC from raising the money and hiring contractors to do this job as well?”Essentially, an unnecessary medium was created to pay the SAA partners for sourcing capital which they used the national assets to raise. All of this was possible because of Mrs Alison-Madueke’s discretionary powers.In 2014, Mr Sanusi told the Senate that Atlantic had lifted over $7 billion worth of oil between January 2012 and July 2013, but while the NPDC had paid $400 million as petroleum profit tax (PPT), its partner had paid nothing, flouting the PPT Act 2007.“The profit sharing arrangement was too good to be true”, The Cable screamed in its analysis. “Under Article 10 (d) (i)-(v), the two parties were to share “profit oil” and “profit gas” in ratios of 90% for NPDC to 10% for Atlantic (“profit oil” and “profit gas” with regards to undepreciated costs associated to capital costs prior to execution of agreement); 40% to 60% (upon full recovery of development costs by Atlantic); and, thereafter, it would be 70% to 30%.”“Up to the full recovery of development costs related to the continental resources, “profit oil” was to be shared 40% to 60% and, thereafter, 70% to 30%. For the “profit gas” upon full recovery of development costs regarding non-associated gas by Atlantic, NPDC would take 30% and Atlantic 70%, and reverse to 30% to 70% thereafter. Profit gas” from the continental resources was to be shared 30% to NPDC and 70% to Atlantic, and thereafter, 70% to NPDC and 30% to Atlantic.”“When you look at the depositions from the US courts, you see that it (the SAA) was a cover for Mrs Alison-Madueke and others to cream off things that should have come to the Federal Republic of Nigeria”, Mr Adio concludes. According to a July 2017 affidavit at a federal high court, Messrs. Aluko and Omokore owe the Nigerian government the princely sum of $1,762,338,184.40.Curiously, the 55% held by NPDC was not given to the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), the NNPC subsidiary concerned with supervising Nigeria’s joint ventures (JVs), production sharing contracts (PSCs) and services contracts (SCs). Why then did the NNPC transfer them to the NPDC, which had no capacity for exploration?Back in March 1999, as former military head of state, Abdusalami Abubakar was wrapping up his eleven-month stint in office and preparing for the transition from military to democratic rule, the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contracts Act was sent to his desk. The bill was meant to stem declining investment in the upstream sector at that point in time due to the absence of a defined fiscal structure. Nigeria had also entered PSC agreements in 1993* and did not have legal backing for the agreements it was entering.Particularly significant was Section 16.For the purpose of the efficient management of Production Sharing Contracts and joint ventures under this Decree, the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (in this Decree referred to as “NAPIMS’) shall be incorporated into a limited liability company under the Companies and Allied Matters Decree 1990, as amended.Accordingly, NAPIMS shall be vested with the exploration and production properties and assets owned by the Federal Republic of Nigeria for the purposes of this Decree.It was following in a tradition of governments signing controversial or hard-hitting legislations at the end of their tenure. Nineteen days to Democracy Day (May 29, 1999), the bill was signed into law; however, a single clause present in the initial version had been deleted. It was Section 16.The amendment effectively opened the floodgates. “With that clause, JVs would have been incorporated”, says a source within the Ministry of Petroleum who requested to be named because he does not have the permission to on the matter. “If they were, as opposed to the unincorporated JVs agreement we run currently, quite a few things would not be permissible. NPDC would pay its bills, crude lifted will be accounted for, recently incorporated companies will not be given such juicy OMLs to operate, cash calls will not be paid ‘mistakenly’ etc.”“Will NPDC use shareholders’ funds to be doing rubbish?”, the source asked rhetorically. “Will an incorporated company setup to make profit be acting so silly? So many ifs.”If the deleted clause was a loophole, the discretionary powers given to the oil minister in the Petroleum Act was a spade that helped Mrs Alison-Madueke dig into depths previously unknown. The entire petroleum industry is controlled by the president and the minister; the former appoints the latter who is then empowered by law. Only the National Assembly could have checked her excesses, but it didn’t.“The political pressure on petroleum ministers to finance elections has turned NNPC into petty cash machine for government”, says Bassey (last name withheld for anonymity), an industry insider. “That the minister has discretionary powers that makes things worse and that’s what we’re trying to unbundle with the PIB. Discretion can make or mar our industry but it is clear what happens in Nigeria.”Who and what institutions dropped the ball and allowed her fully exercise those powers? “The CBN was definitely not one of them, because Mr Sanusi kept harping on the rot in the oil sector”, says Mr Bassey. “The greatest enablers of corruption are civil servants who keep quiet or look the other way to save their jobs because of the god complex of chief executives in Nigeria. Red flags were raised only because of inter-agency collusion with banks, audit firms etc.”“The government is one single unit”, emphasizes Kola Banwo of Abuja-based Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center. “Institutions have roles but usually, with the nature of patronage and corrupt party system we operate, corruption is endemic. The NNPC has internal mechanisms and systems to prevent fraud. The relevant National Assembly Committees have oversight roles and could have prevented this. The Office of the Auditor-General could also have made some difference. The EFCC, ICPC, etc. However, these all formed part of the problem and so did nothing then. Some action from one or all of these, could have reduced if not prevented what happened during that period.”Those in the know say it was the impunitywith which Mrs Alison-Madueke broke the rules that set her apart from those before her. There were times when she stopped receiving visitors at the office and made them come to her in the comfort of her official residence. She would keep governors waiting for hours, dodge calls from CEOs and chairpersons of multinationals, employ domestic staff on the bill of the corporation and more.Mrs Alison-Madueke requested kickbacks from her collaborators to approve dubious contracts and the infamous oil swaps which Buhari ended in November 2015. Mr Aluko for instance, admitted paying rent for Mrs Beatrice Agama’s luxury home in Parkwood Point, St. Edmund’s Terrace, St. John’s Wood, London, describing it as “simply gifts to a friend, given long after Atlantic had signed its deal.”Under her, the NNPC ran accounts that CBN and Ministry of Finance were unaware of. The president would regularly send people to her with odd financial requests and she became the nation’s unofficial treasury with the state corporation as her petty cash ATM. As a result, she was not remitting funds and records to the Ministry of Finance which as in turn unable to remit to the CBN.In the run-up to the 2015 elections, pressure mounted again on Mrs Alison-Madueke to deliver funding and then something happened. In October 2014, Bernard Otti a director at the NNPC was appointed deputy group managing director (Finance and Accounts), a position created entirely out of thin air. The press release justified his appointment as needed to transform NNPC into a commercially-driven entity but the truth was that he had to close some deals to secure election funding.After the Mr Buhari’s inauguration, he ran to the UK after reportedly entering a plea bargain with the EFCC; With his help, the EFCC traced monies allocated for the Ekiti gubernatorial elections and other issues. His retirement was later announced by Kachikwu in August 2015.Audits by both PwC and KPMG showed that the NNPC had at its discretion, spent an average of $6 billion annually from 2011 to 2013 and there were no watertight records. A similar amount had also not been remitted on a yearly basis by NNPC to the CBN.After studying the patterns and making calculations, Mr Sanusi cried out in a September 2013 20-page memo to Jonathan that $20 billion was missing. The NNPC claimed the money had been spent on subsidy payments for kerosene and pipeline maintenance even though Mr Yar’adua had ended the payments in July 2009. Another audit by PwC was submitted before the 2015 elections but never released by the government.“Civil society has always suspected that there was corruption in the oil sector”, reveals Banwo. “When information of extravagant spending for maintain jet emerged, civil society raised alarm, called for investigations and her immediate resignation or removal, which the then president ignored. The NASS set up a committee to probe but nothing came out of it.”“When in 2015, the then CBN Governor alleged that she was responsible for the missing $20 Billion from the NNPC coffers, civil society also initiated a campaign for her investigation and removal. The impunity in the then government allowed her get away with the deeds.”If Mrs Alison-Madueke was Princess Di, then Mr Aluko, who was last seen in Porza-Lugano, Switzerland, in 2016, was The Fresh Prince. He owned quite a few private jets and an $80 million yacht, Galactica Star; in September 2013, it was rented to Jay-Z and Beyoncé at the cost of $900,000 a week for two weeks for the latter’s 32nd birthday party. A big fan of Ayrton Senna, he is also a car racing enthusiast and placed third with a Ferrari 458 GT2 at Rome’s Vallelunga circuit in December 2012. Mr Aluko was also the owner of the eighth most expensive condo in New York, costing a mere $50 million.Omokore likewise had expensive lovers including Porsha Williams of; Sanomi and co would reportedly send jets to different cities to pick random girls for weekend parties in cities in another continent. It was the good life.The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit under its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative against the trio asking for the forfeiture of assets worth $144 million,proceeds from the oil contracts. Mr Aluko remains elusive while Omokore has been arraigned in court since July 2016. Mrs Alison-Madueke herself has been arrested even though she is yet to be tried in court. The proverbial mills of God that grind slowly, seem to at last be grinding well“She kept saying ‘when we come back’, says Mr Bassey. “She did not think that Jonathan would lose the elections. Maybe the opaque deals would have continued till now.”Beyond Mrs Alison-Madueke and her oil men, perhaps the biggest fear of stakeholders in the industry is that there could be deja vu in this administration or another. As the salacious details of her time in government circulate, the loopholes that made this possible remain open. The NNPC currently remains more of a political financing tool than a truly national oil company like her peers globally. Newcomers to the party will be happy to take notes – literally.This report was made possible by the BudgIT Media Fellowship 2017 with support from Natural Resource Governance Institute.http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/242769-special-report-diezani-men-deals-bled-nigeria.html