RUDOLF OKONKWO FROM PREMIUM TIMES
Without concluding the probe of suspended minister Betta Edu and publicising its findings, lessons learned, and corrective actions taken, the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, announced the expansion of the conditional cash program to 12 million Nigerians from the previous three million. The Tinubu government is moving on as if nothing happened.
But something horrendous happened.
Since its inception, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation has been a cesspool of corruption. Political leaders always put their favoured stooges there to facilitate the looting of the Nigerian treasure. And there were lots of money to loot.
The National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA) kicked off in 2016 with a $500 million World Bank-backed loan. Later, the Nigerian government added $1.3 billion.
What Betta Edu did when she became the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation was upgrade the looting to power ten with so much haste that it shocked the whole system.
When Tinubu took over as president, his APC’s Southern cabal brought Betta Edu to the ministry to do their bidding the same way the Northern cabal had Sadiya Umar Farouk under Buhari. But knowing how lucrative the ministry was to siphoning easy money without questions, the northern cabal retained Halima Shehu, a disciple of Sadiya, as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA). They supported her instead of Betta Edu’s candidate because she had worked with Sadiya and would protect their interest.
The trouble started when Betta butted head with Halima as soon as she got in there and went to work, moving money around to private accounts and anywhere else that would be out of reach of Halima. It was an open conflict between the two women. Senate President Godswill Akpabio tried to resolve the matter for them at his home office but failed.
There was an effort to move Halima Shehu’s NSIPA away from the ministry to the presidency. Still, Betta Edu fought back the way Akpabio fought back when they wanted to move the NDCC away from him when he was the Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs.
During this fight, Betta Edu ensured that all four programme managers under the ministry were from Cross Rivers. She was ready for a fight.
It was this failure of these two women to agree on how to share the loot that led to this open blowup that Nigerians read about. If Akpabio had settled them, we wouldn’t have known about the missing N75 billion.
You will read nothing here that the EFCC does not know. If the EFCC has not acted, it is not because they need more evidence to act. The only reason they have not acted is that those involved in the stealing are highly placed in the Bola Tinubu’s government. The memo signed by Bola Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamilia, showed President Tinubu himself approved N3 billion that Betta Edu used to verify the social register.
And if Femi Gbajabiamilia’s fingers were on anything, chances are that Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo was also involved. Tunji-Ojo helped Gbajabiamilia become the House of Representatives speaker. Gbajabiamila rewarded him with the powerful Chairman of the NDDC committee in the House of Representatives. That was when Tunji-Ojo became known as the man who spent only dollars in Abuja. Since then, Tunji-Ojo and Gbajabiamilia have been partners in providing “excellent service” to the nation.
It was under Gbajabiamila as speaker that Tunji-Ojo made the most outstanding contribution to the history of the National Assembly: “off the mic.” Most people do not know that Tunji-Ojo ordered that the then Minister of the Niger Delta Godswill Akpabio’s mic should be turned off to stop him from revealing damaging information about his NDDC committee while he was testifying before Tunji-Ojo’s committee.
So, it was not surprising to anyone when Betta Edu awarded a N430 million contract to Planet Projects Ltd for verifying the social register. This company belonged to Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo. As the scandal broke, Mr Tunji-Ojo went to the press to defend himself, claiming that he was no longer a company director but acknowledged that his wife now runs it.
“The question should be, if the company was given a job, did they do the job?” said Tunji-Ojo on national TV. “Was the job validly awarded?”
It was an unbelievable display of shame. Like the chief justice of the nation, the man had no idea about conflicts of interest.
