Group Tackles CSOs Over Alleged N146.19bn Fraud In NEDC

Coalition for Transparency in Nigeria (CTN) has knocked the People Advocacy for Transparency and Accountability (PATAI) and Al-Mushaid Initiative for Transparency and Accountability (AITA) for raising false alarm on corrupt practices within the leadership of the North East Development Commission (NEDC).

Last week, PATAI and AITA accused the leadership of NEDC of mismanaging N146.19 billion, and threatened to report the commission to the anti-graft agency if it did not respond to the allegations by Wednesday, March 15, 2023.

But the Coalition for Transparency in Nigeria (CTN) at a press conference held in Abuja, yesterday, March 12, 2023, dismissed the allegations of the CSOs as “false and baseless.”

CTN executive director, Dr Cecilia Ikechukwu who addressed the news conference said the anti-corruption coalition decided on conducting routine due diligence before commending the two organisations for uncovering the allegations. She said the things that the coalition found out about the entire matter are, however, saddening.

The executive director lamented that it was now clear that “hustlers are hijacking the noble resolve of the citizens to hold the government accountable.”

The coalition said, “The first absurdity we noticed is that the two groups gave the NEDC leadership until March 15, 2023 to answer to their funny posers failing which they will report to the EFCC.

“The anti-graft agencies and other law enforcement agencies conduct media scanning and the press briefing held by PATAI and AITA was already enough ground for the EFCC to step in. The fact that it has not stepped in meant that these two so-called ‘transparency NGOs’ are merely engaged in the use of fictitious petitions, campaigns of calumny, and blackmail to intimidate the leadership of NEDC.

“A second absurdity is that the groups accused the NEDC leadership of mismanaging the sum of N146.19 billion being budgetary provisions made for it. It is absurd that they are not able to articulately pin down the amount within the context of budgetary and implementation processes.

“Third, it is odd that in spite of all the facts they claimed to possess, both groups opted for media mudslinging and name-calling when they could have simply tendered their petition to the EFCC.”

The coalition said the fact of the matter was that “in August 2020, the Senate Committee on Special Duties after a three-day oversight function to appraise the performance of the NEDC commended the Commission for its outstanding performance in the area of humanitarian intervention.

“Another fact ignored by the activists-for-hire is that there is a Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), which must vet the award of contracts of all Federal Government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs). To the extent that our emergency ‘transparency NGOs’ could not fault the NEDC leadership for bypassing the contract processes, they ought to have approached institutions that understand the processes to educate them.

“The implication of this is that there is no project or contract awarded that is more than four years old. We are also aware that because of the paucity of funds, government projects are implemented in phases spanning upward of three years with budgetary provisions made for such projects in installments,” it added.

CTN maintained that the NEDC stands out as one of the most transparent agencies in the country and “we are tempted to rate it as the most transparent in the country until such a time that someone can bring up empirical evidence to prove that another agency has surpassed that record.”

While condemning the coordinators of the two organisations for being insensitive to the dangers of plying their blackmail in a commission that is strategic to long-term peace in the terrorism-impacted North-East geo-political zone, the coalition called on the intelligence community and law enforcement agencies to grill the operators of PATAI and AITA to prove that they are not on errands for Boko Haram/ISWAP. This, it said, was necessary to ensure that things do not fester badly before destructive platforms like the duo are called to order.

The coalition urged the leadership of NEDC to disregard the ultimatum handed in by PATAI and AITA and focus on its mandate of returning the northeast to the commercial powerhouse it was before terrorism disrupted lives there.