Azaman: Idris Musa As NOSDRA DG Disbursed Over ₦109.06 Million In Questionable Payments To Contractor For One Coastline Mapping Job And More Money To Non-Existing Company

Secrets Reporters

Idris O. Musa was already in the fifth year of his reign as Director-General of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) when, in March 2023, President Muhammadu Buhari handed him a second and final four-year term beginning April 2023. 

SecretsReporters investigation can reveal that payment records obtained and deeply scrutinised by this medium show the agency under Musa paid ₦109,061,952.90 to one contractor for a single job – the review of the Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) mapping of the Nigerian coastline between September and December 2023, with the last ₦5.33 million landing after the contractor had already collected 100 per cent of the contract value.

Four payments for one job

The vouchers tell the story in sequence. On 1 September 2023, NOSDRA paid ₦31,118,399.83 described as “30% mobilisation fee” for the ESI mapping review. Seventeen days later, on 18 September, came ₦36,761,202.99 as an “additional 35.44% payment”. On 8 December, another ₦35,848,396.60 arrived as an “additional 34.56% payment”. Then, on 30 December, a further ₦5,333,953.48 was paid for the same ESI mapping review. The arithmetic is damning: 30 per cent plus 35.44 per cent plus 34.56 per cent equals 100 per cent. The contractor had been paid in full by 8 December. Yet the agency paid again on 30 December — ₦5.33 million beyond the full contract value, with no explanation offered on the face of the voucher.

Paying 65.44 per cent of a contract within seventeen days of mobilisation, and then paying beyond 100 per cent, makes nonsense of Section 35 of the Public Procurement Act 2007, which ties mobilisation and advance payments to bank guarantees and certified performance. The law never contemplated a contractor collecting the whole contract sum in three tranches inside four months and then collecting extra.

The name that does not exist

There is a second problem with the Geoafrica payments. The 1 September mobilisation voucher was raised in favour of “Geoafrica Environmental Managers Ltd”. But the Corporate Affairs Commission has no such company. The company on the CAC register is Geoafrica Sustaainable Environmental Consultants Ltd. Public money was paid to a name variant that does not exist on the national company register, an arrangement that offends the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020 and Financial Regulation 415, which demands that every kobo leaving the public purse go to a properly identified legal person.

The 8 December bazaar

The records also reveal a year-end spending spree. On 8 December 2023 alone, three contracts were paid out with sequential voucher numbers 1001118206-1, 1001118206-8 and 1001118206-9, the unmistakable fingerprint of vouchers raised and approved in a single sitting: ₦39,320,509.22 to Ribodek Integrated Services Limited for office furniture and equipment, ₦35,848,396.60 to Geoafrica as the 34.56 per cent top-up, and ₦24,397,673.68 to Willaf Nigeria Limited for laboratory equipment, reagents and consumables. That is ₦99.52 million in one day, three weeks to the end of the fiscal year, the classic rush to exhaust budgetary allocations, against the grain of Section 38 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007, which requires public money to be spent only as appropriated and for value received.

Buried in the records is an entry the agency would rather the public never saw: on 4 April 2023, ₦8,468,225.32 was recorded as “Overpayment Deduction”. In plain language, NOSDRA’s own books admit that somebody had been overpaid and the agency was clawing the money back. Who was overpaid, for what contract, and was the full sum ever recovered? The records do not say. But under Financial Regulation 415, no payment should leave the treasury unless it is fully supported before it is made. An overpayment of ₦8.47 million is not a rounding error but an evidence that the control failed.