The upper legislative chamber had set up the committee to investigate and recover over N6 trillion accrued from the non-payment of ground rent from property owners across the country.

Addressing the committee on Wednesday in Abuja, Fashola said the presidential implementation committee (PIC) will be in the best position to speak on the matter.

“About two years or so ago when they started passing C-of-Os to me to sign and I said where is the delegation. Because the power to sign C-of-Os are vested in the president for land belonging to the federal government and in the state governors for lands belonging to the states,” NAN quoted the minister as saying.

“In the process, I saw a body called PIC, the body that was supposedly issuing receipts and all of that. Anytime I sought to find this body, nobody showed up.

“As we are getting close to the end of term, I now formally wrote, I asked the director of lands to write them, to ask to tell me what they are doing.

“They PIC replied that they are not accountable to our office and they are in the SGF office and that they report to the presidency. So, as far as your letter seeks to ask us to account for the PIC, they don’t report to us.

“I will advise that you direct your enquiries about what the PIC does to the SGF since the organisation does not report to me, I cannot account for them.”

Speaking with reporters after the meeting, Adamu Aliero, the committee’s chair, said they have interacted with the presidential panel and it said N18 billion has been recovered so far.

“Within the next three weeks, we will come back for an update. I’m sure they will be able to collect whatever is due to the federal government on all federal government property either sold or still under the hold of the federal government,” he said.

“You will agree with me that in this era of revenue shortfall and federal government is trying to diversify all sorts of revenue other than oil. When they hear N6 trillion, definitely, a lot of attention will be given to it.”

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Elias Masilela, chief executive of the PIC said the bank, whose chief executive Thierry Tanoh was ousted by the board on Tuesday, needed to devote as much attention to governance as to growth.

“The institution grew too fast in a short space of time. They needed to have taken stock at some point and thought about internal issues instead of focusing on the expansion program only,” he told Reuters in an interview. “It would seem like the expansion program preoccupied everything.”

Ecobank’s board removed Tanoh following months of internal division after Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an investigation into alleged breaches of corporate governance.

The PIC, which has an 18.35 percent stake in the bank, has been a vocal critic of Tanoh and in a March 1 letter called for his dismissal to prevent “the death of a pan-African dream”.

Masilela said Ecobank needs to stabilize as it emerges from growth and will face a hard task integrating its investments.

“Until it has stabilized it’s very difficult to tell where the risk areas are, so at this stage we may think it’s a leadership problem and tomorrow it may be something else.”

However, despite the recent turmoil, Masilela said the PIC still considered Ecobank “a very good bank with huge prospects.”

“All that we need to do is to nurture it so that it delivers as expected,” he said.

The PIC’s investment in Ecobank has given it to exposure to fast-growing states such as Ivory Coast, Uganda and Zambia as the fund manager tries to diversify beyond South Africa. Ecobank is headquartered in Togo and listed in Nigeria and Ghana.

The money manager, the biggest in Africa with 1.4 trillion rand ($130 billion) in assets under management, invests on behalf of public sector employees. Its top client is the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), the continent’s largest pension fund.

It has a mandate to invest up to five percent of GEPF assets in other African countries outside South Africa, which Masilela said would generate new business for local companies and reduce unemployment, while helping the rest of the continent to grow. However, he said the PIC still needed to overcome skepticism from some South Africans.

“Do South Africans fully understand that? I am not convinced that they do,” he said, adding that some wanted the PIC to focus on the considerable investment needs at home.

So far, the PIC has deployed half the 5 percent allocation in the rest of the continent, focusing on private equity, infrastructure and property investments, given the relatively small and illiquid markets outside South Africa, Masilela said.

“If you look at the capitalization of stock markets across the continent put together, they will account for less than 20 percent of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange,” he said. “That says to us you can’t rely on listed investments.”

The market capitalization of the JSE, the continent’s most active bourse, is just over 9 trillion rand.

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The South African government-owned Public Investment Corporation’s (PIC) demand was made in a letter to the interim chairman of the bank, which is headquartered in Togo and is listed in Nigeria and Ghana and on the West African regional bourse BRVM.

Four senior executives called several weeks ago for Tanoh to step down, and the letter raises the pressure on him ahead of Monday’s extraordinary general meeting of the bank, although his position is not on the official agenda.

It lists a series of allegations, including that Tanoh took a unilateral decision to dismiss finance director Laurence do Rego, contrary to a decision by the board. Tanoh did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Interim chairman Andre Siaka told Reuters he would respond to the letter, which was signed by Daniel Matjila, the chief investment officer of the PIC. Matjila is one of 12 directors on Ecobank’s board.

“We … request the chairman to persuade the GCEO (Tanoh) to resign with immediate effect failing which his contract will be terminated as soon as the Board is in the position to meet and discuss the business of the Bank,” said the letter, seen by Reuters.

“If we don’t take this drastic step, we may not have a bank in the near future. That will be the death of a pan African dream,” it said. PIC has an 18.35 percent stake in Ecobank, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Ecobank has assets of around $20 billion and operates in 33 African countries, giving it an unusually broad footprint and a significant role in financing economic expansion on a fast-growing continent.

The bank’s profit rose 56 percent in the first nine months of 2013.

Senior bank officials say most shareholders view Tanoh’s leadership in the context of Ecobank’s financial health. PIC, however, said it understood that dividends may not be paid this year.

“Several Ecobank subsidiaries are in dire need of capital to do business,” the letter said, accusing Tanoh, a former vice president of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, of failing to raise money for the bank.

The EGM at the bank’s headquarters in the Togolese capital Lome is due to vote on governance reforms including the establishment of a seven-member interim board with places for Tanoh and Matjila.

The four members of Tanoh’s Group Executive Committee who called on February 13 for him to step down to solve what they said was a crisis of leadership are on the current board, but would not have seats on the interim board.

A senior bank official said it was against bank regulations to place any additional items on the EGM’s agenda, which would mean there could be no vote on Tanoh’s tenure.

Matjila said in the letter that the board had hoped to discuss Tanoh’s tenure at a meeting in Lome last Tuesday, but had been thwarted by a court injunction that prevented the meeting taking place.

The letter said PIC was shocked and dismayed over the injunction, which it described as a “strange tactic”.

It said seven board members supported Tanoh’s dismissal as CEO, which would constitute a majority. It was not possible to confirm the figure and other board members did not respond to a request for comment.

A former board member told Reuters last week that seven board members were likely to vote against Tanoh. The letter also listed other groups who it said wanted Tanoh’s departure.

At the same time, former chairman Kolapo Lawson said Tanoh, who joined the bank in January 2013, would defend his position. “Thierry Tanoh can fight his own corner,” he told Reuters on Saturday.

The letter said PIC’s complaints about Tanoh were shared by directors Kwasi Boatin and Sipho Mseleku. They included accusations of failure to focus on the bank’s business, being unfit to lead and bringing Ecobank into disrepute.

They also focused on two issues that have caught the attention of Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which last August launched a probe into corporate governance following allegations made by do Rego.

Ecobank officials say do Rego was suspended in August in part in a dispute over her professional qualifications, and only later made her charges to the SEC. She left the bank in January and the SEC said last month she must be reinstated, a move that Ecobank said would be criminal under Togolese law.

Do Rego has declined previous requests for comment.

The letter also said Tanoh had awarded himself a $1 million bonus without board approval.

Tanoh has said that correct procedures were followed over the bonus and that any perception of unfairness is false. Tanoh said in September he would forego a bonus for 2012 as part of efforts to rebuild confidence, given the SEC investigation.

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