Secret Reporters No place to hide
Secrets Reporters
A tempest of financial mismanagement has erupted at the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, with the eye of the storm swirling around an eye-watering sum of ₦2.6 billion.
The recently released audit findings have cast a damning shadow over the ministry’s handling of the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) during the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns over payments made for ghost projects that never saw the light of day.
According to Paragraph 415 of the 2009 Financial Regulations, “money must not be spent merely because it has been voted”—a maxim seemingly ignored. Paragraph 708 further stipulates that “no payment should be made for services not yet performed or goods not yet supplied.” Yet, the audit uncovered six payments amounting to ₦2,617,090,786.00 disbursed to five contractors for the procurement, packaging, and distribution of COVID-19 palliatives across Kano, Zamfara, and Abia States—services for which no evidence of implementation exists.
The breakdown of these shadowy transactions paints a grim picture. Four payment vouchers worth ₦2.08 billion were directed to three contractors for Kano State, while Zamfara and Abia States received ₦223.2 million and ₦315.4 million, respectively.
Despite the hefty payouts, auditors found no tangible evidence to show that the funds translated into any meaningful interventions on the ground. The palliatives, it seems, vanished into thin air, leaving the intended beneficiaries stranded amid the chaos of the pandemic.
The revelations have triggered alarm bells about the potential diversion of public funds. With the payments unaccounted for, the situation reeks of financial impropriety, putting the ministry in a precarious position. The specter of paying for services not rendered hovers ominously over the findings, threatening to erode public trust in the government’s ability to manage funds intended for the nation’s most vulnerable.
In its defense, the ministry attributed the non-implementation of the programme to the “chaotic situation in the country during COVID-19.” A test run of the school feeding initiative in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), they claim, was met with “public outcry and disdain,” leading to its suspension in other states. However, the audit report found this explanation wanting, deeming it inadequate to justify the massive financial outflows without results.
The auditors were unyielding in their stance, maintaining that the payments, until proven otherwise, represent a glaring breach of financial regulations. The report recommended that the Permanent Secretary of the ministry be called to account for the ₦2.6 billion before the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly. Furthermore, the funds must either be recovered and remitted to the Treasury or those responsible sanctioned under Paragraphs 3104 and 3115 of the Financial Regulations.
Observers have likened the payments to feeding phantom mouths, a cruel irony for a programme aimed at putting meals on real tables.
