The REA, an agency established in 2006 under the Ministry of Power and saddled with the responsibility of providing Nigerians in rural communities with adequate access to electricity, has repeatedly found itself riddled with controversies around corruption and power tussle.
Senior officials of Nigeria's Rural Electrification Agency (REA) are enmeshed in allegations of corruption that threaten the ability of the oft-troubled agency to achieve its purpose of providing electricity to rural communities, PREMIUM TIMES can report.
At the heart of the financial scandal is a 'cabal' that insiders say always tries to control the agency's finances and frustrate any efforts at reform by any chief executive of the agency.
Two anti-corruption agencies, the EFCC and ICPC, are currently probing the alleged embezzlement of public funds to the tune of N1.2 billion among some high-ranking officials of the agency.
Between August and September, the EFCC, ICPC and the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives, in different invitations, interrogated some top officials of the agency.
By speaking to sources and reviewing official documents, PREMIUM TIMES established that suspicious payments totalling about N1.2 billion were found to have been paid to the personal bank accounts of six officials of the agency's finance and accounts department between March and July without justification.
PREMIUM TIMES also understands that some officials in the ongoing saga have returned part of the funds to the ICPC's recovery account. At least five of the officials have been suspended, this newspaper can confirm. and an in-house disciplinary committee has been constituted by the Managing Director of the agency, Ahmad Salihijo, who demanded that anti-graft agencies investigate all officials including himself.
But the man alleged to be at the centre of this fraud, according to sources and documentary evidence reviewed, is the agency's Director of Finance and Accounts (DFA), Abubakar Sambo.
Mr Sambo reportedly colluded with other senior officials at the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) to grant the suspicious payments from the GIFMIS portal supervised by the AGF's office.
During several hearings by the internal investigation team and the anti-graft agencies, according to records reviewed by this newspaper, Mr Sambo's name and that of his Personal Assistant, Usman Kwakwa, kept coming up as the one who gave directives for these payments.
While the massive N1.2 billion scandal is still being investigated, Mr Salihijo - under whom the alleged fraud was investigated internally and escalated to anti-graft agencies - and the Executive Director of Corporate Services, Olaniyi Netufo, who chaired the in-house disciplinary committee against the accused, has also been accused of wrongdoings.
The anti-graft agencies have received petitions accusing Messrs Salihijo and Netufo of violating some sections of the code of conduct, this newspaper also found.
A timeline of alleged fraud
On 15 March, Mr Sambo, the finance director, announced the appointment of 10 officials of the department as project accountants. This followed a February meeting with members of the Finance and Accounts department, during which the DFA hinted at the creation of the project accounts for the six geo-political zones of the country, according to sources.
The officials included Laure Abdullahi, Okojie Onome, Umar Karaye, Asuni Aminat, Kwakwa Usman, Pada Titus, Yahaya Bello, Yakeen Nuruddeen, Sunday Echu and Ogunjobi Folusho.
Sources at the agency say Mr Sambo also promised a favourable welfare regime for members of staff of the department even as he warned against leaking official information from the department.
Insiders told this newspaper that appointments as accountants under projects of the agency are not uncommon. What is strange in Mr Sambo's appointments, they say, is that there are no named projects where these officials are to serve as accountants.
For the next couple of months, under the guise of the project accountants, six of the officials had their personal bank accounts flooded with amounts between N100 million and N300 million each, according to preliminary investigations by the EFCC and ICPC.
The officials are Laure Abdullahi, Okojie Onome, Umar Karaye, Asuni Aminat, Kwakwa Usman and Pada Titus.
The investigation by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives found the amount to be slightly higher, ranging between N160 million and N400 million to each of their accounts and totalling more than N1.8 billion within the same period, according to documents seen by the newspaper.
The documents also revealed that the funds were sent in tranches of less than N5 million naira at a time and in many instances, multiple times a day.
This, our sources say, is to circumvent the Currency Transaction Report (CTR) rule which mandates commercial banks in Nigeria to report any cash transaction exceeding N5 million for individuals and N10 million for corporate bodies as part of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act (MLPA) 2011.
Mr Sambo, the DFA did not respond to calls, texts and WhatsApp messages sent to his known telephone line requesting comments.
Officials finger DFA
By August, the top officials of the agency allegedly involved in this fraud found themselves facing multiple investigative panels and committees -from in-house disciplinary committees to the EFCC, ICPC and the House of Representatives, all of them independently.
This followed a petition written against the agency to its supervising Ministry of Power and a subsequent directive by the ministry that the allegations in the petition be probed by the REA.
Later in September, the agency, through its Director of Corporate Services, Mr Netufo, issued queries to all the individuals allegedly involved in the saga. It also set up an in-house disciplinary committee chaired by Mr Netufo.
Other officials who received queries for these alleged infractions include the procurement officers at the agency.
During the sittings of the committee, all of the officials denied any wrongdoing, insisting they simply followed Mr Sambo's directives.
Meanwhile, two officials of the department, Ogunjobi Folusho and Yakeen Nurudeen, both of whom received N1 million each, said they were told it was for their welfare.
They also accused Mr Kwakwa, the DFA's Personal Assistant, of collecting N300,000 cash from them, leaving them with N700,000. Both of them (who were not among the six main beneficiaries) have refunded the money to the ICPC's recovery account, documents seen by this newspaper showed.
In his response to his query, Mr Nurudeen said the DFA asked all the Finance and Accounts staff, including National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) members posted to the department, to provide their respective account numbers to Mr Kwakwa for a welfare package.
"When I received the credit alert of N1 million on 19th May, 2023, I asked for the purpose from the (PA), he told me it was on the DFA instruction for staff welfare as promised. Messrs Yahaya Bello, Sunday Uche Odoma, Folusho Ogunjobi and I went to the DFA Office and thanked him for that," Mr Nuruddeen wrote in a reply to the query issued to him, a copy of which this newspaper obtained.
"Three days later, (Monday, 22nd May, 2023), the PA in person of Usman Ahmed Kwakwa asked us i.e. Messrs Yahaya Bello, Sunday Uche Odoma, Folusho Ogunjobi and I to refund N300,000.00 (Three Hundred Thousand Naira only ) each in cash. Whilst others agreed and refunded cash, I insisted on transferring the said amount electronically into his bank account."
As of the time of this report, the EFCC and ICPC have not concluded their investigations while the five internally indicted officials remain suspended under Nigerian civil service rules.
Petition against Mr Netufo
As Mr Netufo oversees the internal probe of the other top officials at the REA, petitions have also been raised against him at the EFCC, ICPC, the National Assembly and the Presidency.
One of our sources alleged that the petition against Mr Netufo was sponsored by the officials being investigated for fraud; this could, however, not be ascertained.
In one of the copies of the petitions seen by PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Netufo was accused of actively running a private organisation, NECOL Nigeria Ltd, where he allegedly holds a 40 per cent share.
The petitioners said this is contrary to Section 5 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act which stipulates that "a public official shall not, except he is not employed on full-time bases, engage or participate in the management or running of private business, profession or trade."
In the petition, Mr Netufo was also accused of syphoning funds from the agency's accounts through proxies, his personal accounts and the account of NECOL Nigeria Ltd where he allegedly holds a 40 per cent stake.
Mr Netufo has not responded to PREMIUM TIMES' request for comments. He asked this reporter to meet him in his office last week but during a brief meeting with the reporter in his office, he said he was going for another urgent meeting. This reporter later sent the questions to Mr Netufo's WhatsApp line, and although it showed that the messages were delivered, he has yet to respond to them as of the time of this report.
Petition against Mr Salihijo
Some months ago, an obscure group called the Fight Against Corruption Network (FACN), accused the MD of the REA, Mr Salihijo of awarding a N200 million project under the World Bank-assisted Nigeria Electrification Project (NEP) to En Consulting & Projects Limited, an organisation they claimed Mr Salihijo had a stake in. That allegation and other similar ones led to an investigation of the MD by the EFCC which cleared him of any wrongdoing, our sources said.
However, one other allegation against Mr Salihijo which PREMIUM TIMES has confirmed to be true is that he approves some official transactions via messaging platform, WhatsApp.
In leaked communications seen by this newspaper, Mr Salihijo authorised the DFA to make payments ranging from N500,000 to N1 million to accounts of people believed to be staff of the agency.
For instance, on 22nd June, Mr Salihijo approved the payment of N1 million to Philip Jegede; N1 million to Kehinde Edebiri on 26th June; and N500,000 to Khalifa Ashiru on 27th June.
In one particular conversation, Mr Salihijo approved the payment of N5 million naira to Mr Netufo.
Another controversy that the WhatsApp communication showed was when the embattled DFA suggested to Mr Salihijo that he wanted to give money to anti-corruption officials.
"...I did suggest to you sir, we should get some money from the capital before It mop up so as to service all these important schedules, including federal Auditors, Inspectors, those that are coming from Oagf to rule and close 2022 capítal sir. We cannot imagine how much we may need especially for ICPC and Auditors," Mr Sambo wrote the MD on messaging app WhatsApp on 1st July.
"We cannot meet this issue with our overhead of N20 million. You asked me to see EDts, which I did, but later he said that he asked you and you said it should be later. I didn't know if there was a provision somewhere to service all this appointment sir. If we do not 1 still suggest that EDts to provide a platform to utilize and make a provision quickly from the capital which we were told will be shut down by 12 midnight today. Thank you sir and waiting for your further directives."
The chat shows that the MD did not approve that request but did not scold the official either. He later told PREMIUM TIMES that he never understood what the DFA was talking about in the message.
"Well, I never approved it. And I didn't even understand what he was saying to be honest, because the entire text wasn't even very understandable. So I didn't even understand what he was saying. So I never approved," he said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
Mr Salihijo said the approvals he gave via WhatsApp were to hasten the process of work, adding that there is 'proper documentation' for all the payments approved.
"Sometimes due to work exigencies of work, you can make or give some instructions via WhatsApp. But every instruction is backed up by official documents, which are all available.
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"So, these are some times to make things happen faster...but then everything is backed up by official documents," he said.
Speaking about the alleged N200 million contract to En Consulting, Mr Salihijo said while he was an employee of the organisation before joining the REA, he never had a stake in the organisation.
He also said contrary to the allegations, the REA did not award any contract to the company.
He said: "That contract was never awarded, and I don't have any interest in En Consulting. If you look through my CV, you can see in my employment history that I've worked there before, but I don't have any interest in the company. And REA never awarded any contract to the company. Yes, there were just negotiations, I think, that happened but the contract was never signed, and there was never work that was done."
History of a Troubled Agency
The REA, an agency established in 2006 under the Ministry of Power and saddled with the responsibility of providing Nigerians in rural communities with adequate access to electricity, is not new to controversy. The agency has repeatedly found itself riddled with controversies around corruption and power tussles.
For about two years - from 2009 to 2012 -, the agency found itself in limbo following former President Umaru Yar'Adua's attempt to scrap it over a N5 billion fraud allegedly perpetrated by some federal lawmakers and officials of the agency.
Also, the last two Managing Directors (MD) of the organisation were kicked out amidst allegations of corruption and what insiders described as an 'intense power play'.
Kenneth Achugbu served as the agency's MD from 2012 to 2016, a tenure riddled with corruption allegations and a brief suspension from office in 2014.
In 2017, former President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Damilola Ogunbiyi as the first female head of the agency. She served from 2017 until 2019 when the then Minister of Power, Sale Mamman, fired her even though she had tendered a resignation letter months earlier. Mr Buhari would later reverse the sack and accept her resignation about a year later. Mr Mamman himself was later fired in what was described as a cabinet restructuring and is now under the EFCC radar over an alleged N22 billion fraud.
According to some officials of the agency, Ms Ogunbiyi was "frustrated out of that office" by a cabal that has always held sway at the agency and ensures they label false accusations against any MD that tries to reform the place.
Ms Ogunbiyi left the REA to take up a respected role at the United Nations where she currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Sustainable Energy for All, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, and Co-Chair of UN-Energy.
In January 2020, former President Buhari approved the appointment of Mr Salihijo, a mid-level civil servant, as the MD of the agency.
Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe
