The House of Representatives has indicted the governing board of the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, over alleged illegal approval of N5.8 billion North East intervention fund.
The board is chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbanjo.
The indictment is contained in the report submitted by the House of Representatives Committee on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness that probed alleged financial malpractices against the Director General of NEMA, Mustapha Maihaja.
During the presentation of its report on Thursday, the committee headed by Ali Isa, PDP, Gombe, accused Osinbajo of illegally approving the sum of N5.8 billion as intervention fund for the North East.
He was said to have committed the alleged offence in June 2017 when he was Acting President.
The committee said the fund was misappropriated by the agency headed by Maihaja.
The committee alleged that Maihaja embezzled N33 billion emergency intervention fund meant for the agency.
It therefore recommended the sack and prosecution of Maihaja over alleged financial malpractices.
The report of the committee reads in part: “On the emergency intervention of food security to the North-East to support the population ravaged by insurgency, 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 Hon. Minister of Finance and the Accountant General of the Federation to so act.
“The details further specified a directive to the Governor of CBN from the Ministry of Finance to pay the sum from the Consolidated Revenue Fund Account which the AGF is to raise a mandate for. This is in contravention of approval of NASS on the issuance of Euro Bond from which the Hon. Minister authorized the payment.
“Committee noted the flaws and infractions on the authorization granted and removal of such huge sum of money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund Account of the Federation in violation of the Constitution … due process was not followed as taxes and interest accruable to government were not deducted and remitted to the FIRS on the sums released and paid into the accounts of the different corporate entities shown above, this created colossal loss of revenue to the Federal Government.”
