By Dan Auta Musa
It is no longer news that an ad-hoc committee of Kaduna State House of Assembly investigated the financial affairs of Kaduna State Government under the immediate past administration of Mallam Nasir El- Rufai and turned in a damning report of alleged sordid deals, shady transactions, outright looting of the treasury and audacious violation of applicable financial rules and regulations. The report showed how former Governor Nasir El-Rufai and his aides ran the state’s economic affairs like voracious rapists, disregarding all laws and rules of engagement, and allegedly left the state with a crippling debt crisis of over N425 billion.
The news is that the alleged suspects are making strident efforts to discredit or rubbish the excellent effort of the ad hoc committee members, by casting aspersions on the report and dismissing it as an orchestrated witch-hunt by political detractors. Typical of the El-Rufai persona, his camp thinks that they can always blow hot air to disperse the storm, or pull a veil to blindfold the public from seeing that they have been caught pants down, with their hands enmeshed in the cookie jar. Hopefully, their diversionary tactics and sentimental antics won’t work, as many stakeholders have urged the incumbent administration not to leave any stone unturned in the stride to hold the suspects accountable for the financial misdeeds that brought financial distress to our dear state.
The level of financial recklessness excellently captured in the 205-page report has shocked Kaduna residents and stirred up national outrage because of the magnitude of the financial malfeasance. While it would have seemed that mismanagement of public funds has become so deeply entrenched and the public is no longer shocked, the well-packaged report has thankfully shocked Nigerians. But the accused persons and their lackeys have hypocritically mounted the moral high horse, as they strive hard to discredit self-evident accounts of their dirty deals, often by blowing hot, rather than presenting concrete proof of their innocence.
To get more and better perspectives, let us start the story of Kaduna state lawmakers’ financial inquest from the beginning. On April 16, 2024, Honourable members of the Kaduna State House of Assembly resolved to investigate the root causes of the State’s crippling financial crisis despite increased revenues from all sources during the tenure of the immediate past administration. The House, at its 150th sitting, constituted an ad hoc committee to investigate loans, financial transactions, contractual liabilities and other related matters of the state from May 2015 through May 2023.
After a painstaking and highly commendable exercise, the committee of 13 Honourable Members, headed by Barrister Henry Magaji Danjuma and Hon Yusuf Mugu as Chairman and Vice Chairman respectively, turned in a comprehensive report on June 5, 2024. As mentioned earlier in this piece, the report contained shocking details of alleged reckless financial deals, total disregard of federal and state laws on government borrowing, and shady movement of funds from the state’s internal revenue accounts, without due process or to unknown beneficiaries.
Expectedly, much of the malfeasance occurred at the Ministry of Finance, which oversees the accounting and entire financial affairs and related activities of the state government. Under El-Rufai’s watch, this strategic ministry operated like a coven of financial indiscretions. As a case in point, the ministry routinely made a partial sweep of internally generated revenues from commercial bank accounts, leaving huge balances that never got into the State’s Treasury Single Account (TSA). This means that portions of government funds were left hanging in commercial banks instead of being transferred to the consolidated revenue accounts or to the TSA main account, as required by law. More significantly, there were cases of public funds outflow from the revenue accounts which were not traced either to the consolidated Internally Generated Revenues (IGR), account domiciled at the UBA, or to the TSA main account. Sadly, this happened daily, according to the report under review. In sum, the ad hoc committee report estimated that the dishonest handling of IGR funds possibly caused the loss of a whopping N30.09 billion during the eight years of El-Rufai.
It is possible that even El-Rufai himself did not know the enormity of the sordid financial misdeeds that occurred at the State Ministry of Finance, or the Office of the Accountant General, under his watch. Investigations of the ad hoc committee pointed to numerous cases of unjustified reversal of cash and cheque deposits, use of debit cards (ATM) on public revenue accounts contrary to rules, possible diversion of public funds to individuals and companies, unjustified payment to government bodies, transfer of funds to undisclosed accounts and payment of commercial bank loans directly to a contractor’s account, in direct contravention of extant laws.
From details of the report, Mallam El-Rufai and his aides appeared to have been particularly reckless, audacious and provocative when they obtained a contract financing loan of N20 billion from Zenith Bank in April 2023, just one month before the expiration of his tenure. The said loan was said to have been obtained without the consent of the legislature and paid directly into the account of contractors. Both actions of the government, in taking and disbursing the huge loan, are said to have contravened Section 23(1) of the Debt Management Law (Kaduna State law No. 8) of 2015.
In like manner, the alleged frequent withdrawal of huge amounts in cash by the duo of Muktar Ibrahim and Sani Sambo, both working in the Office of the Accountant General, violated the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) Act 2018, the Money Laundering Act of 2022, and the Central Bank of Nigeria regulations, all of which prohibit cash withdrawal above N5 million by an individual. The ad hoc committee report showed that cash withdrawals by the aforementioned persons in the Accountant General’s office amounted to N3.3 billion. But that is not all. Muktar Ibrahim alone was said to be responsible for the withdrawal of a whopping 1.4 million US Dollars from the Kaduna State Economic Transformation (DFR) Dollar Accounts No 0809009141. The investigative committee rightly suspected that these cash transactions were fraudulent.
Time and space will not permit us to mention all the alleged financial misdemeanours said to have been committed under the watch of Mallam. But this write-up will be incomplete without the mention of Jimmy Adebisi Lawal, a former Managing Director of the defunct Alpha Merchant Bank. Many knowledgeable persons were alarmed when in June 2015, a newly inaugurated Governor El-Rufai appointed Lawal and placed him in a very strategic position. As Senior Adviser Counsellor to the Governor, Lawal had the ears of El-Rufai on programmes of economic development, job creation and financial services. Although his role was advisory, Lawal mostly had the last say on the Operational Accounts of the Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service (KADIRS), though he claims to have always acted on behalf of the Governor.
From the committee’s report, each of the ambitious programmes that the Lawal handled turned out to be a spectacular failure after guzzling a few billion. A case in point is the N10 billion ‘Ruwan Sanyi Wheat farming’. At its outset, the 10,000-hectare project was managed by the Ministry of Agriculture where it rightly belonged. It was later moved it to the office of Jimmy Lawal. He allegedly failed to even clear the allotted land for the project, forcing the proposed off-taker Flour Mills to decline interest. After the project failed, it was returned to the original owners, the Ministry of Agriculture. Strangely, the closure report by Lawal claimed an outstanding liability of N2.6 billion.
By bringing certain individuals very close to himself at the earliest part of his administration, it would seem that El-Rufai has himself to blame. Loans were allegedly obtained indiscriminately, from local and foreign lenders, many times without the mandatory consent of the House of Assembly. The ad hoc committee report shows that the loans were not utilized for the purposes for which they were secured. Perhaps, the incumbent Kaduna administration may consider sponsorship of full publication of the ad hoc committee’s report in the print media, to avail interested parties and the general public the opportunity to see how the murky waters of financial malpractices flowed freely in the Kaduna state executive chamber during El-Rufai’s tenure.
The way and manner the El-Rufai camp has reacted to the painstaking and highly successful efforts of the House of Assembly ad-hoc committee could have been another cause for public outrage, if not that scandals no longer shock Nigerians. First, the former governor encouraged a few of his defunct cabinet members to attempt a rebuttal, or try to discredit the report of the investigative panel, despite its clarity and excellent presentation.
In a disjointed press statement issued on June 4, the El-Rufai gang, comprising a clique of former executive council members who possibly knew about or actively participated in some of the shady financial schemes against Kaduna state, dismissed the valuable work of the house as “sensation-driven and fact-challenged”. Ironically, it is their press statement that smacks of hypocrisy, sensation and lack of concrete facts. While the investigating lawmakers called witnesses and made specific claims, the naysayers dwelt on emotions, platitudes and pure hot air.
For instance, they could not deny that a N20 billion loan was clandestinely procured from Zenith Bank during the dying days of the administration neither did they try to disprove the fact the loan was obtained without the mandatory authorization of the legislature, and paid directly into the account of several contractors, contrary to global best practices, and in total disregard of extant federal and state laws on such matters.
The wind has blown, revealing the carefully concealed ugly parts of the immediate past administration in Kaduna state. The incumbent administration stands at the crossroads and the public is watching to see which turn it makes with the chilling report of the ad hoc committee of the lawmakers. One option is to carefully synthesize the report into specific allegations of the economic crimes and a petition sent to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to enable further investigation into the smoking guns, and possible prosecution.
It would be miserable if the findings of the legislative inquest were swept under the carpet, and nobody is held accountable for the current financial distress of our dear state, brought upon her by a chief executive who places himself far above the laws of the land.
*Musa writes from Kaduna state
