TRACKING __ The House of Representatives Thursday resolved to investigate alleged sleaze and misappropriation of N100 billion at the Northeast Development Commission (NEDC).
It has consequently given its Committee on Finance, Procurement and NEDC to exhaustively investigate these allegations and report back in eight weeks.
The decision was sequel to the passage of a motion sponsored by the minority leader, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu (PDP, Delta). Presenting the motion, Elumelu said the Northeast Development Commission Bill was signed into law in October 2017 by President Muhammadu 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.
He expressed concern that the corrupt practices includes high handedness by the Managing Director, Alhaji Mohammed Goni Alkali, over inflation of contracts, awards of non existent contracts, massive contract splitting and flagrant disregard for the procurement laws in the award of contracts.
The minority leader alleged that “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 infrastructural development credited to the name of the commission in the whole of the Northeast.
“Worried that there are allegations of how the Managing Director and his close associates diverted funds meant for the commission to purchasing of choice properties in highbrow neighborhoods of Abuja, Kaduna and Maiduguri to the detriment of the suffering refugees and infrastructural development.
“Further, I am worried that there are allegations of how the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Hajia Sadiya Umar 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.”
