By Between 21 August 2023 and 16 June 2026, the Federal Ministry of Works paid N27,172,849,346.33 to a contractor named on the payment records as EPSILON SKY GLOBAL ENGIN LTD. Seven separate payments. Every one of them went out under the watch of Works Minister David Umahi, and every one of them names a company in a form the Corporate Affairs Commission does not carry.
SecretsReporters scrutiny of the CAC public register, run on 31 October 2026 under the paid name, the full name, the shortened forms and the registration number itself, returns one single Epsilon Sky record. It is EPSILON SKY GLOBAL ENGINEERING LTD, RC 761785, registered on 22 July 2008, and its status on the register reads INACTIVE, carrying the Commission’s own note: “Visit CAC and update your status.” No company is registered under the truncated name the ministry paid. The name on the vouchers is not the name on the register, and the company behind the register entry has stood inactive while the money moved.
Inactive is not a small thing. It means the company has failed to keep its position on the register current, and the Commission flags it publicly until it comes forward and regularises its status. The company exists in law. It is not struck off and it is not dissolved. But a ministry that checks before it pays, as the law requires it to check, meets the word INACTIVE on the first screen, and that word is a stop sign.
This is not a shell with no address and no men on the ground. A firm of this name is at work today on a federal road. Published reports in The Sun and Leadership record Epsilon Sky Global Engineering Ltd executing the 76.5 kilometre Malando to Ngaski to Wara to Auna road in Kebbi and Niger States under a Works award made in late 2024, with work begun in January 2025 and its managing director, Marcel Hattab, speaking for the company on site through 2025 and into February 2026. A live contractor, holding federal road work, paid N27.17 billion by the ministry, while its own entry on the national register stands inactive and the vouchers paying it never carried its registered name.
The law speaks to exactly this. Under the Public Procurement Act 2007, only bidders that are legally existing entities can bid for public contracts. Under the Financial Regulations, the Permanent Secretary, as accounting officer, must verify the legal existence of every contractor before payment is made. That duty sat with Engr. Rafiu Olarinre Adeladan, chief accounting officer of the ministry, until his retirement on 27 August 2026. Each of the seven payments was a separate decision, and each was a separate moment when the check could have been made. The CAC public search is open to anyone. The check takes minutes. Run at any point in those three years, it would have shown an inactive company and a name that did not match the vouchers.
David Umahi is the minister, and the buck stops with him. His ministry paid N27.2 billion across seven payments to a company standing inactive on the CAC register, under a name the register does not carry. Adeladan, as accounting officer, carried the legal duty to verify before a kobo left the account. Neither has answered for it. The money is public money. The register is public. The status on it reads INACTIVE for every Nigerian to see.
