The Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, allegedly paid $200 million as consulting fees in whistleblower recoveries within statutory approvals, according to the House of Representatives Adhoc Committee, which is looking into the sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil totaling more than $2.4 billion and crude oil export to China from 2014 to the present.
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Malami and the minister of finance, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, have not been cooperating with the committee in terms of appearing to answer questions arising from the crude sales despite letters of invitation sent to them, according to the committee’s chairman, Hon. Mark Gbillah, who made the disclosure at the resumed public hearing.
Gbillah said;
We have not been getting any form of cooperation from the Ministry of Finance and Attorney General’s office regarding this investigation despite a series of correspondents sent to them on this matter that we are investigating. We’ve seen documentation from the Accountant General’s office, where the minister of finance approved the payment of a substantially significant amount of money to so-called whistle-blowers where details of monies recovered were not provided.
We’ve looked at the functions of the Attorney General’s office and we’ve not seen any statutory powers provided for the Attorney General by the constitution to determine how Nigeria’s money should be spent.
There was an incident about a whistleblower who made a formal report to Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) about $200m paid into two companies accounts Biz Plus, and GSCL allegedly for consultancy services, which allegedly were approved, they said by the Attorney General’s office on the approval of Mr President.
He further noted that;
These are very weighty allegations and as a responsible House, we owe everybody fair hearing and a benefit of doubt, and this is what we’ve been seeking to accord those who have been mentioned in these allegations. But we find it un-actionable that the Honourable Minister of Finance and the Attorney General of Federation have not bothered to respond to any of the correspondence from the committee and this in our opinion shows a lack of regard not only to the Institution of House, but that of the National Assembly as a whole.
We will make this further appeal to the Honourable Minister of Finance and the Attorney General of the Federation and all others who have not responded or who have not honoured the Committee’s invitations to do so in the national interest, and in the event that they fail to do so, we will be constrained to invoke the instrument of the summons and all other necessary powers the National Assembly can exercise in this regard.
Abuja Building Wall Collapses, Two Dead, Four Rescued
Four people were rescued from a collapsed wall in the Ademola Adetokunbo Crescent, Wuse II, Abuja, according to the FCT Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
This was confirmed by Dr. Abbas Idriss, the Director-General of FEMA, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja.
Idriss said;
Around between 10 a.m to 11 a.m., we received a distress call that there was a building collapse beside the United Bank for Africa Bank (UBA) at Ademola Adetokunbo Crescent, Wuse II.
“We quickly activated our rescue team to go there and on getting there they saw it was a wall that fell on artisans working around the area. So far six people were removed from the rabbles and two have died while four are in the hospital at the moment.
It is a building under construction and they have eaten into the building next to them because it is not their building that fell it is the neighbour’s building that felt on them.
The director-general said that the agency had been sensitising FCT residents on the need to abide by building approvals and the Abuja Master Plan.
He called on stakeholders saddled with the responsibility of granting building approvals in the FCT, like the Department of Development Control, Department of Engineering Services and other agencies, to ensure that they give proper approval and monitored constructions in all locations.
