The jury

CAIDOV asks EFCC to investigate allegations of diversion of public funds at REA

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2 years ago

The Centre Against Injustice and Domestic Violence (CAIDOV) has asked the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to open investigations into what it described as fraud, criminal conspiracy and diversion of public funds allegedly going on in the Rural Electrification Agency.

The Executive Director of CAIDOV, Gbenga Soloki, in his letter delineated EFCC/PET/HQR/4798/2023 at the EFCC office stated that the organisation is bothered that the REA is becoming a cesspool of corruption, adding that “we hereby call on you to investigate financial transactions in the agency as a matter of urgency to rescue the agency from corrupt public officers.”

According to CAIDOV, corruption is going on in the hierarchy of the REA among government officials who are being paid by taxpayers, adding that this is an injustice which is a core mandate of CAIDOV’s activities.

“We have followed the chain of allegations bordering on financial malfeasance trailing the management of REA; we recently got the news on allegation that 37 bank accounts were linked to the Biometric Verification Number of a key officer of REA, with two of those accounts in his mother’s name. (Annexure 1)

“While still waiting for the true position to unravel, CAIDOV stumbled on report that recently about 200 staff of the agency had their bank accounts credited with sums of money between N500,000 and N600,000 for a purported training that never took place.

“Staff who received the strange bank credit alert in June, were told by management to assume the money, drawn from fund meant for capital project, was for training programme they did not attend We have proof that the said training is an invention framed to siphon money by REA leadership from the agency’s coffer.

“The fake training followed a trend of events in REA last month, designed to clean out remaining allocated funds in the agency’s treasury that by law should have been returned to the Federal Government.

“It’s pertinent to add that a large chunk of the said money would end up in the pockets of those in charge of REA, and the aforesaid firms were just conduits used to perpetrate those frauds. This warranted the conclusion that the country lost not less than N300m under false pretenses to corrupt government officials in REA in June.(Annexure 2)

“If those were shocking, a bigger shocker is that no less than N1.2bn also ended up in REA’s hierarchies’ private pockets between March and same June in under-the-table deals, with account officials at the agency’s headquarters as conduits.

“Under questionable circumstances, over N1.2bn were paid into eight account officials’ bank accounts in curious manners, bordering on project supervisions and the like, which all have absolute nothing to do with the Account Department.

The modus operandi adopted was to transfer various sums to the account officials’ accounts under surprising pretext, who in turn would forward the loots to the appropriate quarters.

The transaction tracks were usually covered by paying less than N5m at a time to each of those aforementioned persons’ accounts so as not to draw suspicions.

“We desire that the disturbing trend of corrupt practices in REA under Ahmad’ leadership is rooted out and those involved are made to face the consequences. To that end, we demand full investigation into our allegations, and to ease your probe, kindly find attached some documents,” CAIDOV told EFCC.

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