Secret Reporters No place to hide
Fejiro Oliver
In what can best be described as a Nigerian government of fraud and looters, the Director/CEO of the National Library of Nigeria, Mallam Habib.A Jato has entered into the murky waters of corruption.
According to authentic information sourced by Elombah.com, we gathered that Mr Jato awards contracts to his cronies and phony companies without any approval from the tender board.
Our sources in the office confided in us that the CEO is just an employee of the Federal Government who comes to work at will and hardly stays in the office. This attitude of his makes official mails to stay for as long as six to nine months on his official desks before they are attended to.
When contacted, a very senior officer of the Library simply hissed and said, “Don’t mind the mallam whose only hobby is to travel round the world and not show up in the office. Why he has not been sacked despite all his financial recklessness is what most of the staffs cannot understand. This man travels to abroad like its Lagos he is going to”.
Further investigations by this newspaper reveal that Jato has not entered the office up to 16 times since 2014 began. The only time he showed up was during the release of budgetary allocation, which he collects and within 48 hours the entire money is gone, stated a source. “There is nothing to show that budgetary allocation is being used appropriately”, said a source angrily.
In what looks like a deliberate attempt to milk the National Library dry, we found out that the internally generated revenue are not remitted to the relevant agencies, despite the millions coming into the coffers. This money we can report is used by Jato to chase women of easy virtues and junket round the globe with them.
Angry staffers who also confided in Elombah.com revealed that all their claims and entitlements of over 3 years are still lying fallow in the CEO office, without any hope of getting paid, despite all the money made available to the agency.
CONTRACTS OF FRAUD
One of the documents which will obtained clearly revealed what the CEO has been doing for years; the inflation of contract. On April 16th 2014, Mr Jato awarded a contract to Fortnet Integrated Services, Abuja, located at Suite C12, Intercontinental Shopping Plaza , Plot 507, Wuse, Zone 3, Abuja. The contract was for the supply of IPAD. Laptop and Camera fpr the sum of Three Million , Six hundred and forty three thousand, five hundred naira.
The breakdown of the equipment on investigation by Elombah.com showed a distinct inflation of the prices. Two canon camera 1200D 18, 1 Mega pixel was quoted as N800,000, which was a far cry from the true amount. Our checks at various firms that deals on exactly same camera in Nigeria revealed that it cost a mere N87,500 each.
Three HP Pavilion laptop with all the features were valued at N430,000 each which has a gross total of One Million, two hundred and ninety thousand. This proved another fraudulent deal, as the same laptop is sold in Nigeria for N122,000.
The looting continued with the purchase of 3 Apple IPAD 4 64gb, which Jato quoted as N430,000 each. A thorough check in various firms and shops shows how Jato has turned the Library board into a cash cow, as the IPAD is sold for a paltry sum of N71,000. Another laughable part of the fraudulent contract was the purchase of a common HP Executive laptop bag for N30,000 each, when the actual price is a ‘chicken change’ of N6,000 while some sell it for N4,170.
Elombah.com is working on more fraud committed by the Library CEO.
