NOSA EGHAGHA
The House of Representatives committee on Public Accounts has summoned the Director Generals of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA), and Defence Intellegence Agency (DIA), over foreign contract.
The two DGs are expected to explain their roles in the financing of contracts awarded by the Nigerian High Commission in Addisa-Ababa, Ethiopia.
This is just as the Acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mrs Janet Oliseh, led retired Ambassador and Permanent Secretary and two Financial Attaches that served in the Mission during the time of the controversial contract, signed in 2013, to explain their roles in the payment process.
PAC at the Investigative Hearing on Monday, got to know that the award of contract for the construction of a presidential lodge and guest chalets to serve the Nigerian delegation to the annual African Union, (AU) conference in the Ethopian capital, at the instance of then President, Goodluck Jonathan’s.
The contract was said to be exclusively financed by the two major external-related security agencies, the DIA and the NIA.
“From records I met upon my recent resumption as the director, overseeing office of the permanent Secretary, in the ministry, the bank account from which the project was financed until an order came for its stoppage was controlled by the DIA and the NIA, with Foreign Affairs Ministry not having any say or control over it,” Mrs Oliseh.
She further stressed that first part of the query raised by the Auditor General of the Federation (AuGF), that the Nigerian Mission in Ethiopia was denying it access to financial documents in its investigation on the projects costed at over N220 million.
The AuGF had raised an 8-point query on the Addis-Ababa mission project also bordering on funds embezzlement, non compliance to public procurement provisions in contract award, payment to contractors without required certificates as well as not following due process in virtually all stages of the contract award.
Though the acting PS initially denied and tried to give explanations to issues raised in the Auditor’s query, she later, upon facts presented by the committee, asked for more time to review the reply submitted by the ministry before her assumption of office, with a view of getting to the heart of the matter and providing additional information and documents as requested by the committee.
Chairman PAC, Rep Oluwole Oke had earlier frowned at the manner both Ambassador Lulu and his predecessor in office at the Addis–Ababa Mission Ambassador Adeoye had handled the issue to drag till now without resolving it.
Oke noted that since much of the Committee’s work is post-mortem in nature, the mission contract issue since 2013 was allowed to drag on for two long with non of the personalities involved exhaustively exploring the available windows of resolution.
The committee chairman noted that the committee was pressed for time to turn in its reports on audit queries and granted the acting PS two weeks instead of six weeks she asked for to get her documents together for reappearance.
