How Elumelu, Others Shared N6Billion

May 21, 2009 14:37, 683 views
By Nnamdi Felix /Abuja


As the controversy over the fraudulent “sharing” of the sum of N6.2 billion belonging to the Rural Electrification Agency between Senator Nicholas Ugbane, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu and others rages, sources within the anti-graft commission have revealed some details on how the alleged fraud was perfected and executed.

Information from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) at our disposal indicate that the members of the House Committee on Power involved in the alleged N6.2 billion fraud and their cohorts at the Rural Electrification Agency met soon after the passage of the supplementary budget late last year, at a five-star hotel in the Abuja metropolis, to harmonise positions on how many companies to be nominated by the participants to benefit from the “contract.”

It was also revealed that they altered the composition of the states designated to benefit from the first phase of the electrification exercise to include participants’ choices which were not included in the list of benefiting areas. Elumelu and others currently facting trial were also said to have defied a directive from the Presidency, issued on 4 December, 2008, directing all agencies to return any unspent budgetary allocation to government coffers immediately. They allegedly converged on the same five-star hotel on 17 December, last year and allegedly issued a deliberately contrived letter of contract award to themselves on the basis of the number of companies “sponsored” by each of them.

The 10 public servants and officers standing trial for the fraud were alleged to have paid out to themselves, on 24 December, 2008, 15 per cent of the various amounts in the respective contracts awarded to their nominated companies. About 64 companies were used in the grand disbursement of the agency’s funds. No prequalification of companies was done in the entire process of the contract award, neither was there any bidding nor tendering procedure adopted as stipulated by the Procurement Act.

It was further gathered that Elumelu and the nine others allegedly paid out to themselves, on 30 December, 2008, the outstanding 85 per cent of the total contract value for their respective nominated companies without recourse to the practice of retaining 10 per cent of contractors’ payment for a period of six months in such contracts to ensure that the jobs executed will stand the test of time. Some of the companies which purportedly got these jobs were yet to move to site even after receiving complete payment for the contracts.