Naijaonpoint
Dr. Yusuf Maina Bukar, appointed Director-General of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW) by President Muhammadu Buhari with effect from 4 April 2022, was barely a year into the job when 2023 opened. His agency has one statutory job: to combat desertification and land degradation across Nigeria’s eleven frontline states, principally by planting trees. A SecretsReporters digging into his agency can reveal that payment records obtained and deeply scrutinised by this medium show that in 2023, under Bukar, the agency spent N625,429,498.74 and the desert got streetlights, wood stoves and school fences instead of trees.
The N157.72 million wood-stove triple
On 3 April 2023, three companies were paid for the same item – “improved wood stoves for 20 selected communities” in neighbouring Yobe local governments: Private Flyers International Limited got N52,902,325.58 for Bade and Jakusko LGAs, Safe frames construction company limited got N52,574,415.87 for Karasuwa and Yusufari LGAs, and Surez Global Resources Nig Ltd got N52,245,200.00 for Machina and Nguru LGAs. Three contractors, one product, one day, N157,721,941.45. Either one stove contract was split three ways which is a direct hit on Section 43 of the Public Procurement Act 2007, which prohibits splitting contracts to evade competitive bidding or the agency bought the same stoves three times over. Stoves, it must be said, are not trees.
Streetlights for the border, fences for Osogbo
On 25 May 2023, Bentit Nigeria collected N146,068,526.70 for solar streetlights “in the border communities of the northeast, Yobe State”, and a day later Kaita Integrated Services Limited took N67,283,985.15 for solar streetlights in a Kano constituency. Then, on 26 May, Jotafab Resources Ltd was paid N31,818,372.87 for “the fencing of selected secondary schools in Irepodun/Olorunda/Osogbo federal constituency” — Osogbo, in Osun State, hundreds of kilometres from the desert frontline and outside the eleven states the NAGGW (Establishment) Act 2015 covers. An anti-desertification agency spending the agency’s appropriation outside its statute doing fencing schools in Osun is a misapplication of public funds, contrary to Section 38 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007.
Fourteen lights here, seventeen lights there
On 29 June 2023 alone, eight separate solar-light contracts were paid, each between N8.19 million and N17.03 million: Brickmore Nig. Ltd (N17,034,659.79 for 32 lights), Spring Maple Global Int’l Ltd (N9,479,399.45 for 17 lights), Naebass Integrated Services (N8,984,860.75 for 16), Demski Nigeria (N8,630,680.50 for 14), Sulco Consults (N8,486,936.88 for 15), Triple D. Nigeria (N8,447,274.75 for 14), Sy-Kins Ventures (N8,442,565.82 for 14), Symbah Synergy (N8,193,543.74 for 14) – plus Mein Kampf Limited, a company literally named after Hitler’s manifesto, which got N8,275,848.27 for 14 lights in Kebbi. Eight vendors, near-identical sums, one day: the fragmentation Section 43 of the Procurement Act exists to stop. And at roughly N600,000 per light, the unit economics alone demand a probe.
Source: …Secretsreporters