Reports into the running of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) revealed that at least N183bn (£578.68m) of government cash committed to the agency was diverted to other uses.
President Muhammadu Buhari, upon assuming office on May 29, has stepped up investigations into how government agencies were run by the previous government. Several ministries, government agencies and parastatals have been probed so far, revealing a string of corrupt deals and large scale embezzlement.
This investigation has now moved to the NDDC and according to the Samuel Ukura, the auditor-general of the federation, large sums of funds have been found unaccounted for. Mr Ukura insisted on the veracity of his special audit report accusing the management of the NDDC of diverting the money, directing those not satisfied to be prepared to defend their position before a special committee of the National Assembly.
He added: “The Office of the Auditor General for the Federation stands by the special periodic checks on the NDDC and its contents. Any person or corporate organization not satisfied has the opportunity to defend itself before the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly.”
Mr Ukura had earlier made his findings about the money known to the National Assembly, as constitutionally required. Following the publication of the report, which urged the lawmakers to take immediate steps to recover the missing money, the NDDC took to the media to discredit the report, dismissing it as very misleading and untrue.
NDDC executive director, finance and administration, Henry Ogiri, who described the report as premature and misinforming, said it tended to accuse the current NDDC management of being responsible for the alleged missing money. However, the Office of the Auditor General said it took serious exception to attempts by the NDDC to not only deny the allegations but also casting aspersions on the integrity of the special periodic audit submitted to the National Assembly.
Mr Ogiri said: “I say without fear of contradiction that the auditor-general’s report is premature. I say this because we are already putting together the responses to the queries which were directed to a period we were not in the commission.”
“I completely disagree with the auditor-general on this issue. Some of the claims he made in his report are things that do not hold water as at today and I do not believe that there is any money missing.”
In the three special audit reports submitted to the clerk of the National Assembly Salisu Maikasuwa, Mr Ukura had noted that the N183.7bn was discovered to be missing during the periodic checks carried out by his office on the activities and programmes of the commission between 2008 and 2012. While about N70.4bn was paid as mobilisation fee to various contractors that never showed up at to site to do the job, he said another N90.4bn was discovered to be extra-budgetary expenditure for head and sub-heads without approval by the legal authorities.
Equally, the sum of N10bn was recorded in the books as tax deductions without evidence of remittance to the Federal Inland Revenue Service, while about N5.8bn was said to have been paid to contractors for projects not executed, stalled or abandoned, in addition to N1.2bn as taxes not deducted from contractors. Again, the report said about N3.1bn consisted of transfers to some unauthorised accounts, while N1.7bn was outstanding staff advances never accounted for.
In a separate development, there were reports of no evidence that about N785m out of N1.1bn budgeted for the supply of furniture to various schools in Delta State was spent on the project, despite being certified as paid. It is not clear if the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission will be asked to investigate the NDDC as a result of these allegations.
