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The Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund (MDGIF) exists to finance the pipelines and gas infrastructure central to Nigeria’s energy ambitions – money meant to build capacity, not enrich a single private consultant’s commission. Documents available to SecretsReporters that eviewed the agency’s financial year, the very year Oluwole Adama took office as the Fund’s Executive Director, has found that ₦3,517,519,273.00 was paid to a privately engaged consultant to recover a government debt, in a transaction that broke federal revenue-collection rules at nearly every stage, with no presidential approval, no due diligence report, and no evidence the consultant’s own work could be trusted at all.
The payment relates to the recovery of outstanding Gas Flare Penalty owed to MDGIF, which the Fund’s Governing Council engaged a consultant to pursue from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation between August 2021 and May 2022.
The consultant recovered ₦65,442,219,048.35 on the Fund’s behalf and for that work, charged and was paid a flat 5% professional fee, disbursed across three separate tranches: ₦1,075,000,000.00 on 8 May 2024 described as payment for the first instalment, a further ₦1,075,000,000.00 the same day for the second instalment, and additional sums making up the full ₦3.52 billion total, all paid out under Adama’s watch as the Fund’s Chief Executive and Accounting Officer.
This directly breaches Paragraph 3(d) of Treasury Circular Ref No. TRY/A6&B6/2019/OAGF/CAD/026/V.III/401 of 17 October 2019, which states in unambiguous terms that revenue collection and accounting “shall not be concessioned at a fee or commission to any consultant(s) or third-party, without express/written approval of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” No such presidential approval was produced to the audit team to justify engaging a private consultant to recover money owed by one arm of government to another.
The irregularities compound from there, and every one of them falls squarely on Adama’s desk as the officer responsible for MDGIF’s financial administration in 2024. Investigators found no evidence that the consultant adhered to the terms of engagement set out in its own award letter, which required it to engage the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Office of the Accountant-General and the Federal Ministry of Finance for reconciliation purposes, none of which could be verified, and none of the affected agencies’ responses to the consultant were produced to confirm the authenticity of the recovery figures the consultant itself generated. Nor could MDGIF, under Adama’s leadership, produce the due process documentation or due diligence report that should have preceded the consultant’s engagement in the first place.
In effect, a private party was paid ₦3.52 billion to recover money between two government institutions, using a methodology no one outside the consultant can verify, reconciled against agencies who never confirmed they were consulted, under an engagement with no due diligence trail and no presidential sign-off and it was Adama’s Fund that authorised the payment.
When the government agency responsible for reconciling the books put these findings to MDGIF’s management, the response by the Adama was that the action had been taken “in compliance with Governing Council approval granted at its meeting of 23 May 2023”, an answer which was deemed as unsatisfactory, noting that Governing Council approval is not the same as the express, written presidential approval the Treasury Circular specifically requires for this exact category of concessioned revenue-collection fee and that the findings therefore remain valid until fully resolved.
This is public money that should have flowed straight from one government account to another, with the full ₦65.44 billion strengthening the very Fund Adama now publicly promotes as backing over a hundred gas infrastructure projects nationwide. Instead, over ₦3.5 billion of it more than 5% of the entire recovery left the public purse entirely under his watch, paid to a private consultant whose own figures nobody outside the transaction can confirm.
The laws broken here are direct. Paragraph 3(d) of Treasury Circular Ref No. TRY/A6&B6/2019/OAGF/CAD/026/V.III/401 was violated outright by concessioning revenue recovery to a private consultant with no presidential approval. The Public Procurement Act 2007’s due process and due diligence requirements were breached by MDGIF’s failure to produce any documentation justifying the consultant’s engagement. And Paragraphs 3106 and 3115 of the Financial Regulations 2009, governing irregular payments and failure to account for public funds respectively, were explicitly invoked by the government as the sanctions applicable to Adama’s administration should the ₦3.52 billion not be recovered and remitted to the Treasury.
Source: …Secretsreporters