North East Development Commission (NEDC) is buckling under the weight of corruption bordering on alleged misappropriation of well over N100 billion appropriated to the nascent agency to ensure a smooth take-off of development projects in the six states under its purview.
The states that are circumscribed by the Act establishing the Commission to benefit from its development activities are Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, Taraba, Bauchi and Gombe, which make up the northeast zone of Nigeria.
Reports from sources in the Commission suggest that appropriated funds meant for development projects have either been misappropriated or diverted outright.
A strong collaboration between the leadership of the Commission and some members of the National Assembly, saddled with approving the budget proposed by the Executive arm of government for the operations of the Commission, is implicated in the cover-up of alleged sleaze that has characterised the running of the Commission since inception.
Moves by some members of the National Assembly to get the leadership to approve a probe of the expenditure of budgetary provisions to the Commission have consistently fallen through due to compromise and sabotage within the National Assembly.
The resolution by the House of Representatives to probe the initial allegation of misappropriation of N100 billion has not been seen through, about nine months after the issue was raised in plenary.
Consequent upon the allegation raised by the Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, Ndudi Elumelu, that a whopping sum of N100 billion was missing in the NEDC in July 2020, the House had set up a committee to investigate the alleged financial misappropriation.
The Chair of the House Committee on Finance, James Faleke, was mandated to investigate and report back to the House in eight weeks, but the Committee, as learnt, neither sat for a day nor has it submitted a report, thus raising the fears in some quarters that the National Assembly might be attempting to sweep such a grave allegation under the carpet.
It was, in fact, learnt that the House had, immediately the ad-hoc committee was set up, come under intense pressure from within and outside the National Assembly to ensure that the process was truncated.
Those who were alleged to have heavily lobbied the National Assembly not to probe the NEDC included a former governor of one of the states in the northeast, who was said to have been instrumental to the appointment of the Commission’s Managing Director, Mohammed Alkali; a senator from Taraba; and a three-term member of the House of Representatives from Borno State.
There were pieces of information linking the leadership of the Senate with the grand plot to cover up the alleged mismanagement of funds in NEDC.
The Conclave learnt that the former governor, who is a senator from one of the northeast states, acting in cahoots with the leadership of the Senate, has been able to stall inquest into the allegations of misappropriation in the NEDC.
Besides, the leadership of the Senate, under the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, who is also from the Northeast zone, is alleged to have been treating the issue lightly. Being an interested party in the affairs of the zone, the Senate President, according to credible information, is trying to ensure that crisis is nipped in the bud.
But a member of the National Assembly hinted that the role played by the Senate leadership in trying to veil the mismanagement of public finance in the NEDC was largely borne out of pecuniary interest much more than the interest of the zone.
A particular concern was raised about the decision of the Senate to approve budgetary provisions to the NEDC in lumpsum without the attachment of the breakdown or details of specific projects that the budget would be spent on.
The National Assembly, by so doing, a source rationalised, had ceded its powers of appropriation to the NEDC, which after receiving the approved lumpsum budget would determine what projects to execute.
Recall that on July 23, 2020, the House of Representatives had mandated its Committees on Finance, Procurement and NEDC to investigate an allegation of misappropriation of N100 billion at the NEDC.
The call for the investigation of the NEDC had come on the heels of the conclusion of an investigation into alleged financial recklessness at its sister agency, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
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 and signed it into an Act.
The core mandate of NEDC, among other things, is 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.”
The Act, establishing the commission, provides for a Governing Body, comprising a Chairman, a Managing Director and Chief Executive; three Executive Directors (one from each member state not being represented by the Chairman of the Board, the Managing Director and the representative of the North-East zone), one person each to represent the six geo-political zones of Nigeria; and one person to represent the Federal Ministry of Finance; and Budget and National Planning.
Moving the motion during plenary, Elumelu had alleged that corrupt practices in the agency included 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 said to have vanished under a year without any visible impact on the refugees nor any infrastructure development credited to the name of the commission in the whole of the Northeast.”
He said the managing director and his close associates were alleged 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-handed 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.”
He said the consistent abuse of procurement laws if not put to check might defeat the purpose for the establishment of the commission, hence the need for an urgent investigation.
Speaking on the development at the NEDC in the context of collaboration by the National Assmbly to cover up wrongdoings, a civil society organization,
Coalition in Defence of Nigerian Democracy and Constitution (CDNDC),
has called on the leadership of the National Assembly to investigate the allegation of missing public funds at the Commission.
Convener of the Coalition, Ariyo-Dare Atoye, in a statement in Abuja, said that NEDC should not be turned into a slush fund to service the greed and personal aggrandizement of a privileged few.
The organization tasked the Economic and Financial crimes Commission (EFCC) under the chair of Abdulrasheed Bawa to get interested in the management or otherwise of the funds of the NEDC against the backdrop of allegations of monumental sleaze at the Commission.
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