Secret Reporters No place to hide
After further investigation, SecretReporters is retracting a previous story on the NIRSAL Managing Director, Aliyu AbdulHameed, after it was determined the allegations were totally false.
On March 3, 2021, SecretReporters published a News story with the headline “Exclusive: How NIRSAL MD, Aliyu Abdulhameed Awarded Contracts to Gombe State Governor’s Brother Without Due Process”.
Investigations have revealed the facts of the matter to be very different from what our writer had earlier assumed. They showed a clear history of HABUCOM Global Resources’ Expression of Interest, eventual selection as an Aggregator of Rice farmers in the CBN Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, and the subsequent disbursements under the terms of the programme.
HABUCOM’s application contained 1,467 rice farmers cultivating a total of 2,185 hectares of land. With Economics of Production set at N197,100 per hectare, the total amount applied for summed up to N430,663,500.
As is the practice in the ABP, farmers have the right to choose their input suppliers and service providers. The farmers aggregated by HABUCOM chose HABUCOM to provide mechanization, seeds and empty bags only.
Therefore, upon approval, the sum of N366,063,970 was disbursed to NIRSAL by the CBN in the first instance, which was duly credited to the farmers’ accounts. Loan documents executed by the farmers permit NIRSAL to debit the farmers’ accounts and credit service providers’ accounts upon the satisfactory provision of such services and products.
This step-by-step process explains the referenced disbursements to HABUCOM Global Resources. It was for the clearing and preparation of over 200 hectares of land, provision of certified seeds, and the provision of over 86,000 empty bags to the farmers.
SecretReporters acknowledges its error in the story published and, as a media platform that prides itself on integrity, has since deleted the story from all its platforms.
