General Muhammadu Buhari
In the face of deepening world economic crisis, the ability of the
Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), General
Muhammadu Buhari, to manage the Nigerian economy and fight corruption,
if elected president, has been called to question.
THISDAY over the weekend, exclusively took hold of the original copy of
a report by the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF) Interim Management
Committee, instituted on July 7, 1999 by former President Olusegun
Obasanjo.
Based on this report, the PTF under Buhari's supervision was
mismanaged. The report was however neither made public nor was it acted
upon by the former president.
In its summary, the Committee had advised Obasanjo to "set up a high
powered judicial panel to recover the huge public fund and to take
necessary action against any officer, consultant or contractor whose
negligence resulted in this colossal loss of public funds."
According to the report, the sum of N25,758,532,448 was mismanaged by
the Afri-Project Consortium (APC), a company contracted by the PTF as
management and project consultant. Buhari as PTF chairman was said to
have also "delegated to them the power of Engineer in all appropriate
project requiring such power," which made them assume absolute powers to
initiate, approve and execute all projects by the PTF.
The mismanagement that took place in the PTF under Buhari's watch was
said to have been carried out by the APC (the company) in their capacity
as management and project consultants. Both their management services
fee and budget for several projects carried out during the existence of
the PTF were greatly overpriced.
While carrying out its obligations, the Committee made up of Dr. Haroun
Adam as Chairman, and Alhaji Abdu Abdurrahim, Mr Achana Gaius Yaro,
Edward Eguavoen, Mr. T. Andrew Adegboro and Mr. Baba Goni Machina as
members, engaged three management consulting firms to verify all
payments made to PTF from inception to September 30, 1999.
On verification, according to the Committee, "it was found that they
(the consulting firms) had overcharged PTF for their services to the
tune of N2,057,550,062". Also, while intervening on behalf of the PTF in
the road and waterways, education, food, health, and other sectors, the
APC, according to the report, inflated all the prices.
For instance, intervention in the health sector, was said to have
totalled N9 billion. Projects in this sector were said to have been
executed by the APC and PTF in-house staff, and loss of billions of
naira were recorded due to price inflation of products and services.
To purchase spectacle frames, which could have been done locally at a
price between N80 to N880, the APC, under the watch of the PTF chairman,
bought them at an inflated price of N1,900 each. Ambulances were said
to have been purchased at N13 million per unit, instead of N3 million.
And then price inflation of drugs were done to the tune of N1.5 billion.
The report also said that the PTF lost money to the tune of N3.5
billion from its bank account operations. The PTF operated its bank
accounts under three different categories: Administration, Project and
Treasury accounts, and the loss of money to these accounts were said to
have been due to "overcharge on Cost of Turnover (CoT), non-payment of
interest on current account balances as stipulated by the Central Bank
of Nigeria (CBN), short payment of interest on deposited funds, and
other various discrepancies."
While discharging their duties, the Committee discovered that an
average income of N182 billion accrued to the PTF from its inception to
the date of filing their report. According to the Committee’s report,
the PTF used about 70 per cent of that income on highways and urban road
projects.
The report stated further that, "In this project sector there was total
variation of contract sums of N68 billion. These variations were not
done with properly priced bills of quantities and approved civil
contracts procedure as stipulated by government regulations.
"Taking the experience of what has been discovered after verification
of various contracts awarded by PTF the minimum potential recovery will
be about 15%. This estimated percentage will be about N10 billion. The
verification of this project sector was about to take off when the
committee members were replaced."
ThisDayOnline
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