By Baron Ike
It has emerged that a whooping N2.5 billion may have been misappropriated by the Presidential Initiative on the North East (PINE) set up by President Muhammadu Buhari to oversee the reconstruction of the area destroyed by the Islamic fundamentalists, Boko Haram.
The alleged fraud was said to have been disclosed at a public hearing organised by the committee in the National Assembly.
The Senate Ad hoc Committee on Mounting Humanitarian Crisis in the North East on Tuesday, December 6 uncovered the alleged fraud of N2.5billion believed to have been perpetrated by the PINE .
The said discovery came at time women in most of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps go through huge discomfort while searching for sanitary pads.
It was learnt that the alleged fraud had to do with execution of non-existing contracts, overinflated contracts and outright misappropriation of funds.
During the sitting, PINE allegedly couldn’t account for N2.5 billion it received for execution of intervention projects in the region.
While Secretary of PINE, Umar Musa Gulani claimed the agency spent N203million to clear taipa grass in Yobe State, stakeholders from the state led by the state’s Commissioner for Information, Mohammed Lamin, disputed the claim, saying “no taipa grass was cleared in the state by any federal government agency.”
The commissioner also countered Gulani’s claim on the clearing of invasive plants species around river banks in the state with N253million by PINE as well as N422.5million he claimed was spent on provision of temporary shelter (tents) to small families in the state.
The claim to have spent several millions of naira for the renovation of about 18 schools completely wiped out by the Boko Haram insurgents in Yobe State alone was also disputed by Lamin and other stakeholders.
The commissioner said only three schools have been renovated in the state by agencies outside the state, to which the State Universal Basic Education (SUBEB) have been directed by the Governor to identify.
Based on the revelations, the committee descended on PINE, directing Gulani to forward to it within one week all documents including photographs of claimed executed contracts, wondering why a paltry sum of N2million was spent by the agency to feed the IDPs and donating N50million to a non-governmental organisation as clearly stated in their statement of account.
Senator Theodore Orji, a member of the committee had said: “ The affected states said they were not aware of all the contracts executed by PINE; you people just decided to make money and that is why you decided to donate N50million for a conference organised by an NGO .”
Also, Senator Ben Bruce, said when the committee visited some IDP camps, many women cried out for provision of sanitary pads which he said could have been well taken care of if the N2.5billion given to PINE out of the budgeted N5billion, was well utilised.
There has been huge outcry from the IDP camps based on poor feeding, habitation and other need sfor which monies are daily being donated.
Many Nigerians have also asked the Federal Government to probe the managers of the funds as they may have misappropriated the resources thereby defeating the objective of the initiative.