The Coalition for Transparency in Nigeria (CTN) has raised the alarm over alleged plot by people it called paid agents to blackmail the leadership of the North-East Development Commission (NEDC) through the use of fictitious petitions.
The group said the aim was to create chaos in the Commission and ultimately distract the NEDC leadership from fulfilling its mandate.
The Coalition made this known at a press conference in Abuja to draw the attention of Nigerians to the nefarious activities of the people with sinister plot under the guise of the People Advocacy for Transparency and Accountability (PATAI) as well as Al-Mushaid Initiative for Transparency and Accountability (AITA).
In his address, the Executive Director of the Coalition, Cecilia Ikechukwu, however, urged Nigerians to ignore the two groups and their baseless petitions.
Ikechukwu said the NEDC has exceeded expectations, evident in its recognition by the Senate and other credible bodies in the country and beyond.
The Coaltion, therefore, urged the leadership of NEDC to “disregard the criminal ultimatum handed in by PATAI and AITA in order to focus on their mandate of returning the northeast to the commercial powerhouse it was before terrorism disrupted lives there.”
It also called on the Commission to report the two organisations to law enforcement agencies to investigate their possible link to terrorism.
Read full statement below:
Gentlemen of the press,
You would have become aware of the activities of two groups, the People Advocacy for Transparency and Accountability (PATAI) and Al-Mushaid Initiative for Transparency and Accountability (AITA). For those who are yet to become accustomed to them, PATAI and AITA last week accused the leadership of the North East Development Commission (NEDC) of being corrupt. They then threatened to report the leadership of NEDC to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) if it does not respond to its frivolous allegations of mismanaging N146.19 billion. The amount in question is, comically, the entire budget of the Commission. The NEDC leadership supposedly has up till Wednesday, March 15, 2023 to respond else it would be reported to EFCC.
Ordinarily, the natural response is to praise PATAI and AITA as shining examples of the emerging resolve of Nigerians to hold the government and its institutions at all levels accountable. But the Coalition for Transparency in Nigeria, CTN, decided on conducting routine due diligence before commending the two organizations. Unfortunately, the things we found out about the entire matter are saddening as it is now clear that hustlers are hijacking the noble resolve of citizens to hold the government accountable.
ABSURDITIES
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. Was the amount a fraction of a larger budget? What is the timespan the money was meant to cover, one year, two years, or three years? Is the N146.19 billion budget for an entire year? How did the NEDC meet its overhead, recurrent, and personnel costs if the entire N146.19 billion was misappropriated as being claimed?
Thirdly, 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. Or the Independent Corrupt Practices or Related Offences Commission (ICPC). They can only resort to this route because their allegations of corruption in the agency are non-existing, they are phantom lies in the imagination of these questionable elements.
FACTS
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. The Chairman of Senate Committee on Special Duties, Senator Yusuf Yusuf, who led the delegation on the oversight visit gave the commendation. Please, note that the Senate has a Committee on Public Accounts, which would have flagged if anything was amiss in the finances of NEDC.
In June 2022, a Coalition of Gombe Youths and Elders Progressive Forum (CGYEPF) commended NEDC for its laudable intervention initiatives in the North-East sub-region. This Coalition praised the Commission for its various projects in the region. They made their position known in a statement entitled “Gombe Elders and Youths are Happy with NEDC successes in the region,” signed by the coalition’s National Chairman, Alhaji Salihu Magaji. These are citizens that benefitted from the projects it implemented so we wonder where PATAI and AITA are sourcing their own facts from.
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.
Furthermore, the Is shy four years old. 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. Sometimes there are years when there would be no budgetary provisions for an ongoing project which would then be temporarily suspended and then resumed in subsequent years when funds are provided. The list of so-called “abandoned projects of NEDC” drawn up by PATAI and AITA, therefore, reeks of ignorance and is totally laughable.
To date, 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 is able to bring up empirical evidence to prove that another agency has surpassed that record.
CONCERNS
We are concerned that PATAI and AITA are acting out an insidious script with worrisome consequences.
At the very least, we see these two organizations as being driven by hunger that has made their coordinators 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.
But we think the attempt at discrediting the leadership of NEDC was not borne out of stupidity. Rather, we see PATAI and AITA as belonging to the NGO arm of Boko Haram/ISWAP, and their action is part of a larger plot to roll back the progress that has been made in reclaiming the Northeast from these terrorists. Apparently, their strategy is to distract the rebuilding efforts being piloted by the NEDC so that the resulting hopelessness will again drive disadvantaged youth into becoming available for recruitment by Boko Haram/ISWAP.
We fervently hope that our intelligence community and law enforcement agencies will review this latter angle with a view to asking the operators of PATAI and AITA to prove that they are not on errands for Boko Haram/ISWAP. This is necessary to ensure that things do not fester badly before destructive platforms like this duo are called to order.
CONCLUSION
We urge the leadership of NEDC to disregard the criminal ultimatum handed in by PATAI and AITA in order to focus on their mandate of returning the northeast to the commercial powerhouse it was before terrorism disrupted lives there.
However, while disregarding the ultimatum, the NEDC leadership should report the two organizations to law enforcement agencies to investigate their possible link to terrorism because we fear that it is a matter of time before they begin to physically NEDC projects. We urge the relevant law enforcement agencies to take note and act in the interest of preserving Nigeria from rouge groups that masquerade as NGOs.
Finally, while we advise the public to disregard these two organizations, we call on PATAI and AITA to retrace their steps and stop their resort to blackmail. If they need funds there are legitimate channels for NGOs to raise funds without dalliance with terrorism.
Thank you for listening.
