Ahead of the Senate Committee on Niger Delta’s consideration of the
2015 Status Report of the Presidential Amnesty Programme at the Senate
today, Nigerian senators have indicated their disapproval of the over
N48 billion purportedly spent by the President Muhammadu Buhari’s
coordinator of the programme, Brig-Gen. Paul Boro (rtd), since he
assumed office last July.
The senators, who preferred not to be named, were particularly
concerned over Boro’s purchase of official vehicles for his office for
over N157 million as well as the huge sums of money purported to have
been expended on the training of ex-militants between November and
December last year.
The expenditure, which according to the senators, was listed in the
annual status report of the Amnesty Office sent to the Senate
Committees on Niger Delta and Public Procurement, have made nonsense of
the federal government’s efforts at belt tightening measures, arising
from the nation’s dwindling earnings from crude oil.
The annual report, which the two Senate committees would review
along with the office’s 2016 budget today, said the senators, indicated
that Boro who took over from Hon. Kingsley Kuku as Presidential Adviser
on the Amnesty Programme under the current administration, in just five
months awarded contracts worth about N48 billion.
Describing most of the contracts awarded by Boro as “mostly nebulous or frivolous”,
the senators were particularly irked that at a time Buhari had
castigated the National Assembly for its proposal to buy official cars
for senators and members of the House of Representatives, the Amnesty
Office coordinator, who is just an appointee of the president, had since
acquired as his official car, an armoured Lexus LX 570 Sport Utility
Vehicle (SUV) with communications equipment for VIP movement.
The exotic official car was acquired from Wada Autos Limited at the
princely sum of N55 million and full payment has since been made by the
Amnesty Office.
“The president claims to be fighting corruption while his aides
are already swimming in corruption. Can you imagine a Special Adviser
using a bullet proof Lexus car worth N55 million as an official car at a
time the president is trying to stop us from buying our own official
cars worth about N5 million each? So what happened to the monetisation
policy of the federal government?” queried an irate senator, who is a member of the Senate Committee on Niger Delta.
The report before the two Senate committees and sighted by ThisDay
also indicated that Boro had further acquired for his office from Globe
Motors Limited, the following cars: one Toyota Land Cruiser VX V8 at the
cost of N25.85 million; four Toyota Camry 3.5L V6 cars and four Toyota
Hilux 4WD buses at the total sum of N75.35 million. Globe Motors has
since been paid fully the sum.
Some of the senators complained that a thorough analysis of
contract documents attached to the report showed that at a time Nigeria
is experiencing perhaps its worst economic downturn in recent times,
Buhari’s adviser on the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme appears only
concerned about awarding “frivolous” contracts.
“We expected him to restructure the budget he inherited from
his predecessor at the Amnesty Office to fit into current economic
realities and in line with the anti-corruption crusade of President
Buhari. Unfortunately Boro is just spending recklessly,” lamented another senator who did not want to be named.
Credible sources at the Amnesty Office, however, confided in
ThisDay that Boro began the contract awards in November 2015 apparently
to beat the December 31 deadline for the return of unspent monies to the
treasury, as stipulated by the extant financial regulations in Nigeria.
The nation’s financial regulations stipulate that unspent
appropriated funds be returned to the treasury after December 31 every
year. However, the federal government made exemptions for the funding of
capital projects to continue till March 2016.
Latching on to the need to “empower” already trained Niger
Delta ex-agitators, ThisDay sources claimed that some of the contracts
did not follow established guidelines for awards.
A source said: “In several instances, the same contractors used
by the former administration of Kingsley Kuku, who already had due
clearance from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) were rushed in to
handle the so-called empowerment contracts.”
According to an angry senator, the contract awards occurred in
spite of the fact that several of the Amnesty Programme’s trainees in
universities abroad were either stranded or had been repatriated due to
their inability to meet with their financial obligations to their
schools.
The senator said his investigations had revealed that under the
guise that there was no money to pay the ex-militants’ tuition and
in-training allowances, Boro had ordered the students in universities in
the UK, United States of America, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Russia,
the Philippines, Belarus and elsewhere abroad, to return to Nigeria.
“Several of them have since returned and are on the verge of
being placed in Nigerian universities to continue their education. The
Amnesty Office cannot afford to deploy or maintain delegates offshore
anymore,” he quoted a senior official of the Education Department of the Amnesty Office as saying.
The senator said officials of the Amnesty Office told him that N510
million was paid to an institution, Westerfield Colleges, to prepare
150 students for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
This transaction, according to him, stipulated that over a period
spanning just two months, Westerfield Colleges would prepare the
students for the UTME organised by JAMB at a cost of N3.4 million per
delegate.
“The same Boro who has been telling Nigerians that the Amnesty
Office does not have money to fund the education of students abroad is
the one awarding a contract worth N510 million to an institution to
organise JAMB classes for fresh students. This is really very silly and
embarrassing,” he said.
Even more curious, he claimed, was the fact that the payment of the
N510 million by the Amnesty Office was not treated as a contract, hence
no award letter was issued to Westerfield.
Rather, the senator further claimed, Boro in glaring breach of the
Procurement Act and other extant financial regulations of the federal
government, ordered that the payment to Westerfield be passed off as a
direct payment to a school and students.
Efforts to reach Boro and his media consultant, Mr. Owei Lakemfa,
failed, as neither of them responded to calls to their mobile phones. A
text sent to Lakemfa’s phone was also not replied.
Source: ThisDay
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