Beam searchlight on govt parastatals, Group tells EFCC, ICPC

A non-governmental organisation, NGO, Centre Against Injustice and Domestic Violence, CAIDOV, has called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC and  Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, to beam their searchlight on government parastatals over alleged sharp practices.

The group made the call in a petition against the Rural Electrification Agency, REA, under the leadership of Ahmad Ahmad, submitted and acknowledged by EFCC.

In the petition, the group accused REA of conspiring with some of the agency’s directors to pull stunts, all in the name of an alleged fake staff training programme.

The petition by Executive Director of CAIDOV, Gbenga Soloki, alleged that eight staff members in the accounting department of the agency were used to perpetrate the alleged sharp practice to the tune of N1.5 billion.

The petitioner held that recently about 200 staff in REA had their bank accounts credited with N500,000 and N600,000 for a purported training that never took place.

Soloki said: “We have proof that the said training is an invention framed to take money by REA leadership from the agency’s coffer.

“The fake training followed a trend of events in REA last month, designed to clean out remaining allocated funds in the agency’s treasury that by law should have been returned to the Federal Government. 

“It is also to our knowledge that two firms mentioned in the ruse as resource firms for the fake training to perpetrate the heist were paid a total sum of N280 million for doing nothing. 

“It’s pertinent to add that a large chunk of the said money would end up in the pockets of those in charge of REA, and the aforesaid firms were just conduits used to perpetrate those sharp practices.

“Our findings also revealed that the perpetrator(s) claimed that the two firms used received N1.5 million per staff member for the fabricated training on paper, whereas not more than N600,000 was paid to each staff member."

Culled from Vanguard