NDDC, NEDC fraud probe signpost corruption under Buhari

By ADEBAYO OBAJEMU

Just as Nigerians are yet to recover from the trauma of mismanagement and pilfering of public funds as revealed in the Niger Delta Development Commission’s probe, we are suddenly awoken to yet another opprobrious scandal involving mismanagement of public funds in another government agency.

Only last  week, the House of Representatives mandated its Committees on, Finance, Procurement and North East Development Commission,  NEDC to investigate an allegation of misappropriation of N100 billion at NEDC. The lawmakers, BusinessHallmark learnt were compelled to take the decision last Thursday when they adopted a motion brought under matters of urgent national importance by the minority leader, Ndudi Elumelu.

Recall that NEDC was established in 2017, after the bill establishing the Commission was passed by the two legislative chambers. On October 25, 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari assented to the bill by signing it into an Act.

The core mandate of NEDC, as gleaned on its website by this newspaper, include “among other things,  to “receive and manage funds from allocation of the Federal Account, international donors for the settlement, rehabilitation and reconstruction of roads, houses and business premises of victims of insurgency as well as tackling menace of poverty, illiteracy level, ecological problems and any other related environmental or developmental challenges in the North-East states.”

Moving the motion during plenary, Hon. Elumelu alleged that corrupt practices in the agency include high handedness by the managing director, Mohammed Alkali, inflation of contracts, awards of non-existent contracts, massive contract splitting and flagrant disregard for the procurement laws in the award of contracts.

“The N100 billion so far disbursed to the commission by the federal government is reported to have vanished under a year without any visible impact on the refugees nor any infrastructural development credited to the name of the commission in the whole of the Northeast.”

According to  Elumelu,  the managing director and his close associates were said  to have diverted funds from the commission to buy choice properties in highbrow neighborhoods of Abuja, Kaduna and Maiduguri.

“There are allegations of how the minister of Humanitarian affairs and disaster management, Sadiya Farouk was said to have entered into an unholy deal with the managing director of the commission to illegally withdraw the sum of N5 billion from the account of the commission to purchase military vehicles without any recourse to the board, an act which completely disregards the country’s procurement laws and must be seriously frowned at.

“Disturbed that though the managing director single-handedly procured all Corona virus materials and supplies to the tune of N5 billion without an approval from the board, there is said to be another massive corruption scheme on the verge of being implemented in the name of housing scheme in Maiduguri without the board’s knowledge.”

The NEDC bill was signed into law in October 2017 by President Buhari to replace other initiatives such as the Presidential Initiative on Northeast (PINE) and Victims Support Fund (VSF) and the board of management inaugurated in may 2019. Many Nigerians are wondering what has become of an administration which came to power on anti graft mantra.

For the past three weeks, Nigerians’ sense of decency has been violently assaulted by corruption allegations currently being investigated by retired Justice Ayo Isah Salami against Ibrahim Magu, the suspended Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC’s chairman running into billions in graft and other official misdemeanors.

Nigerians are wondering what this means for the country and the present regime. According to Mr. Leke Job, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, the country does not deserve this.

“Nothing indicts this administration more than Magu’s probe; it shows that the whole anti corruption posture of this administration is a ruse, a facade to hide corrupt elements. Recall that the Directorate of State security had earlier indicted Magu, yet the presidency refused to remove him”, Job a Kaduna-based lawyer told this newspaper.

Recall that shortly after 2019 presidential election, former Vice President and Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar on reviewing the performance of President Muhammadu Buhari’s four years in office and returned a damning verdict that the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration was one of the biggest disasters to have ever befallen Nigeria.

Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications, Mr. Phrank Shaibu, he said;

“President Buhari and his APC are criminal enablers and harbour looters of our collective patrimony; and “Buhari’s Hall of Shame” is a scorecard of failure, incompetence, nepotism and a President’s proclivity to harbouring indicted and other famed thieves of our patrimony.

BusinessHallmark recall that, the former acting Director General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ambassador Mohammed Dauda, in a sworn testimony to the House of Representatives Committee on National Security and Intelligence, revealed that President Buhari’s kitchen cabinet comprising late Abba Kyari and Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babagana Kingibe, had pressured him to share the $44 million Ikoyi millions.

After giving his sworn evidence, Ambassador Dauda was dismissed and he subsequently went   underground.

Analysts say though president Buhari may be ascetic, incorruptible, his associates cannot claim moral high ground.

Adams Oshiomhole, former APC Chairman and former governor of Edo State, had a petition against him over allegations of large scale corruption during his days as governor of Edo State by a human rights crusader, Bishop Osadolor Ochei. Oshiomhole has also been widely accused of large scale corruption through numerous financial inducements during the last APC primaries, which resulted in so many of them ending in controversial circumstances, leading to the party being excluded from participating in the 2019 election in some states, (Rivers and Zamfara), even before the election proper

The case of Abdullahi Adamu (N15b fraud), a serving senator and former governor of Nasarawa State,  is still fresh in memory. Said to be one of the President’s allies in the Senate, he was  also a member of the National Advisory Committee of the Buhari 2019 Presidential Support Committee. The lawmaker then was being prosecuted alongside 18 others for allegedly stealing N15bn from the treasury through contracts awarded when he was governor for eight years.

His son, Nurianu, was also arraigned by the EFCC in January 2018 for alleged N90m fraud. As if corruption allegations walk on four legs in the polity, we can recall the case of Folarin Coker,  (DG NTDC);  who was accused of N3b fraud charge.

Lagos socialite and Director General of Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation, NTDC and his wife, Mrs. Aisha Rimi were then at the centre of a major scandal involving the alleged diversion of the sum of N3 billion from an account of Lagos state government. The fund, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC told the court  then was diverted from the account of Lagos State Government Number Plate Production Authority when Coker was the managing director.

There is the Alpa Beta corruption allegation too. The company, a consultancy owned by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State and National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was in 2017 at the centre of a N100billion fraud, tax evasion and money laundering petition written by Mr. Dapo Apara, its’ Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer.

According to Apara’s petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Alpha Beta “has become an avenue for official corruption of government officials, a conduit pipe for massive money laundering scheme, tax evasion, among other vices”.

In the petition, sent on his behalf by Adetunji Adegboyega Esq, his solicitors, Apara said: “Over the years the company is being protected and shielded by some powerful politicians and people in the society which made them to always boast of being untouchable, but our client, feeling the need not to keep quiet again and strengthened by his belief in the fact that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is keen on fighting corruption, which has been the bane of our country, is of the firm belief that it’s time to expose and open the can of worms called Alphabeta Consulting.

This newspaper also recalls the N300 millions grass cutting scandal involving the former Secretary for the Federation, Babachir Lawal. What has become of the case is anyone’s guess.

There was the former Chief of staff to the president’s scandal; t he famous Abba Kyari’s N500m bribe allegation from MTN / N29.9m contract scam. Alhaji Abba Kyari was involved in alleged corruption scandal in connection with alleged N500million bribery money said to have been paid to the Chief of Staff by officials of South African owned MTN Telecommunications Company with the intent that the COS should influence government to discontinue its hard stance on the $5billion fine imposed on the company. Another major scandal against the CoS is the case of a N29.9m contract scam

The petitioner, Bako Waziri Kyari, who claimed to be a nephew to the Chief of staff had said during a popular radio programme, Berekete Family, on Human Rights Radio 101.1FM in Abuja, that Kyari and Sani Ado, whom he claimed worked with the Bureau of Public Procurement, allegedly collected N29.9m from him in order to facilitate the award of a contract. Bako, who is from Bama in Borno State, told Berekete Family that when he lost his father, Kyari came to commiserate with the family and then promised him the contracts.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said, “Abba Kyari asked if I had a company registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission. I told him I did and so he asked me to come down to Abuja. We met at least four times at Caledonia Hotel on Gana Street, Maitama. We discussed there. The hotel should have CCTV and this can be confirmed.

We are yet to forget the allegations that Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai bought 2 Dubai Mansion in Dubai.  The list of corruption allegations leveled against the administration’s top officials  is long. There was the case of Senator Hadi Sirika’s N1.2b Nigeria Airway fraud scandal. Then minister of state transport (Aviation), he was accused of siphoning over N1.2b on a phony Nigeria Air project, which was eventually suspended by the federal government.

 Adamu Muazu,  former governor of Bauchi State, is one the politicians with pending case of corruption with the EFCC, that has taken refuge with the APC. His case borders on alleged mismanagement of N19.8 billion when he was governor between 1999 and 2007.

Abdulrasheed Maina, in spite of the fact that he has one of the most celebrated cases of large scale corruption in recent times, the  current administration made fruitless efforts at reinstating the former pension chief, who was then a fugitive. The huge outcry that greeted the attempt foiled the inglorious move

Mr. Maina diverted billions of naira of public funds through various accounts, allegedly belonging to him, by faking contractual agreements with his companies for biometric enrolment of staff within the pension board. His case at the EFCC remains unattended to, since he had to jet out of the country after that the failed attempt to reinstate him into govt. service. He was later arrested by the DSS but the case has cooled down.

Many former governors with pending cases of corruption against them by EFCC moved to the ruling party, and not much has been heard of the cases. Godswill Akpabio, former governor of Akwa Ibom, who is at the centre of corruption investigation at NDDC, is still being investigated for  allegedly stealing N108b.

The EFCC is investigating allegations that the former governor embezzled N108bn during his tenure between 2007 and 2015. This led the anti-graft agency to write to five banks demanding information on Akwa Ibom State finances under Akpabio’s administration, before commencing. He was the minority leader in the senate but decamped to the APC and current minister of Niger Delta.

Many Nigerians have lost hope in the ability of the administration to fight corruption.