The acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu has revealed that 32 individuals and corporate organizations in the country stole over N1.3 trillion under the last administration.
According to him, one-third of the money could have been used to construct over 500km of roads; build close to 200 schools; educate about 4000 children from primary to tertiary levels at N25million per child and build 20,000 units of two-bedroom houses across the country.
The EFCC boss disclosed this while delivering his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 2019 First Batch Conversion Training Programme to Procurement Cadre for Federal Parastatals and Agencies, organised by the Bureau of Public Procurement, in Lagos on Monday.
In the address delivered on his behalf by the Commission’s Secretary, Ola Olukoyede, Magu decried the huge financial loss to the country, blaming the poor state of the procurement process in Nigeria for corruption which he said had continued to thrive in government agencies and parastatals.
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He said, “One third of this money (#1.3trn), using World Bank rates and cost, could have comfortably been used to construct well over 500km of roads; build close to 200 schools; educate about 4000 children from primary to tertiary levels at N25million per child; build 20,000 units of two-bedroom houses across the country and do even more.
“The cost of this grand theft, therefore, is that these roads, schools and houses will never be built and these children will never have access to quality education because a few rapacious individuals had cornered for themselves what would have helped secure the lives of the future generations, thereby depriving them of quality education and healthcare, among others.”
He also noted that the training organised by the BPP was aimed at giving the participants the tools, knowledge and understanding they would need to carry out their duties in their respective places of primary assignments in an efficient and transparent manner.
“I sincerely hope that at the end of this training, we will see a few cases of financial propriety in our procurement processes in government agencies and parastatal; Indeed, corruption could kill Nigeria, if we do not scale up our proficiency in contract and procurement management process,” Magu was quoted as saying.
Magu explained that the EFCC came into being in 2003 to stem fraudulent activities of some Nigerians and foreigners, mismanagement in the economic sector, corruption by public officials and lack of accountability and transparency in government dealings.
According to him, some of the fraudulent practices in procurement processes to include kickbacks, conflict of interests, fraud in the bidding process, bid suppression, collusive bidding, bid rotation and market division.
These also include co-mingling of contracts, change order abuse, cost mischarging, defective pricing, false statement and claim, phantom vendors, product substitution, unnecessary purchases and purchases for personal use or resale.
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