VP Yemi Osinbajo
The House of Representatives Committee on Emergency and Disaster
Preparedness, has insisted that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, has some
questions to respond to on the approval of N5.8 billion from the
Consolidated Revenue Fund to the National Emergency Management Agency
(NEMA).
Chairman of the committee, Mr Ali Isa, stated this while briefing
reporters after Tuesday’s plenary at the National Assembly in Abuja.
He explained that the Vice President has a case to answer because he is Chairman of the governing council of NEMA.
Isa added that Professor Osinbajo was the Acting President at the time when the fund was approved.
He, however, stressed that the Committee did not mention the Vice President in its report presented on Thursday last week.
The committee has investigated the allegations of violation of public trust in the activities of the emergency agency.
In its report, it said the authorisation for the release of fund
for emergency food intervention in the North East contravened Section
80(4) of the 1999 Constitution as amended.
The committee had also recommended the sack of the Director General
of NEMA, Mustapha Maihaja, for alleged mismanagement of N33 billion
fund.
It indicted all the government officials involved in the release of
N5.8 billion naira for the emergency intervention of food security in
the North East.
The committee had urged the relevant government agencies to take steps to recover the money.
Professor Osinbajo had said the committee’s allegation against him
was both ‘false and misleading’, saying he did not violate any law in
the approval of the fund.
He gave the response in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande.
Read the full statement below;
"Our attention has been drawn to a report of the House
Committee on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness issued on Thursday,
November 8, 2018, particularly in respect of funds released for
“emergency intervention of food security to the North-East” in June
2017, when the Vice President was Acting President.
In its report, the Committee alleged that a sum of
N5,865,671,939.26 was approved and released in June 2017 vide a Memo
raised from the Office of the Acting President, directing the Honourable
Minister of Finance and the Accountant General of the Federation to so
act. The House Committee also concluded that the payment made was in
contravention of approval of the National Assembly. This conclusion is
both false and misleading.
To start with, it is important to understand the context of the
transaction. This was at a time when internally displaced persons and
their host communities faced very severe food shortages throughout the
North East, as a result of successive poor harvests and abandoned
farmlands, minimal cross-border cash crop trade and lost economic
opportunities.
On 15th April 2017, the United Nations World Food Programme (UN
WFP), a major aid organisation and food supplier to the region, had
issued a warning that it would be reducing its vital support to about
1.8 million IDPs by as much as 85%, due to the corresponding reduction
in funding by the donor countries. Around the same time, the United
Nations Commission for Refugees in Geneva also warned of the growing
risk of mass deaths from starvation among people living in the conflict
areas.
The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) moved urgently to
prevent the looming disaster by establishing a strategic food
intervention plan for the affected States. A Presidential Committee on
Emergency Food Delivery to the North East was convened and the Committee
met on the 13th of May, 2017 to kick off the process, with the then
Acting President as Chairman. Other members of the Committee included:
(i) Minister of Finance;
(ii) Minister of Budget and National Planning;
(iii) Minister of State for Budget and National Planning;
(iv) Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development;
(v) Governor of Central Bank;
(vi) Deputy Chief of Staff to the President; and
(vii) Senior Special Assistant in the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President.
Resulting from the deliberations of this and subsequent
meetings, the approval referred to in the House Committee’s Report was,
in fact, based on a request raised by the Governor of the Central Bank
of Nigeria as a facilitator of the National Food Security Programme,
vide a letter dated May 25, 2017.
As explained in the said letter, there was an immediate need to
distribute grains, including rice, maize, soya beans and sorghum, to
Internally Displaced Persons through the National Emergency Management
Agency (NEMA). The only way to obtain the quantity of grains required
was to resort to the National Food Security Programme (NFSP) earlier
established by the Federal Government as a means of shoring up its
strategic grain reserves.
It was in consequence of the Federal Government decision to
urgently purchase the stored grains for distribution to Internally
Displaced Persons that the CBN made the proposal for approval of
30,905.08 Metric Tonnes at N5,229,685,333.26. Of that amount, the then
Acting President eventually approved N5,036,644,933.26, after excluding
bagging costs. This was pursuant to the recommendation that bagging,
transportation and other logistics were best handled by NEMA.
NEMA also originated a request to the Acting President, dated
May 25, 2017, requesting the sum of N829,026,456.00 for general
logistics, branding & packaging, tracking, security, personnel,
media & publicity and contingency costs of taking the grains from
their respective locations in Kano, Kaduna, Funtua, Ibadan and Gombe to
Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba and Jigawa States.
These presidential approvals were well within the clear
constitutional authority of the Acting President, who needed to take
emergency steps to forestall acute food shortages in the affected States
and there was nothing illegal or unconstitutional about them. The
approvals were duly communicated by the Deputy Chief of Staff to the
Governor of Central Bank, Director General of NEMA and the Minister of
Finance for implementation.
On account of the emergency nature of the procurement, the
House Committee’s assumption that the ordinary rules of procurement
would apply was wrong. Section 43 of the Public Procurement Act makes
provision for emergency procurement, in which case the procuring entity
is allowed to engage in direct contracting for goods and file a report
thereafter with the Bureau of Public Procurement.
It is also wrong to assume that taxes and interests accruable
to the government from these transactions in food items were
deliberately ignored or waived by neglect. Of course, we expect that any
loans advanced to any of the companies would be recovered with the
agreed interests and that any profits made by such companies would be
liable to tax in the usual manner.
The suggestion that the grains were never delivered to the
target States is also a blatant falsehood. In actual fact, in order to
ensure effective distribution of the grains, an Emergency Food
Intervention Project Team was established, consisting of the Director
General of NEMA and representatives of the National Security Adviser,
Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, Chief
of Air Staff, Department of State Security, Nigeria Police and the
Presidency.
The Committee also worked with respective State Emergency
Management Agencies, as well as humanitarian agencies such as World Food
Programme, International Committee of the Red Cross, and the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Deliveries
were publicly made directly to the intended beneficiaries.
In fact, the then Acting President personally inspected the
electronic truck-tracking unit established in Maiduguri for the purpose
of monitoring the transportation and flagged off the food distribution
on the 8th of June, 2017. Besides, there was the integration of a robust
monitoring and evaluation system into the operation in order to
facilitate a transparent and accountable process.
Therefore, all insinuations on this matter regarding purported
indictments and perceived violations of due process or the constitution
are baseless and totally false. Such interpretations are flawed and
should be utterly ignored.
Laolu Akande
Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President
Office of the Vice President
9th November 2018."
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