Fraud rocks FG electricity agency, NELMCO
Consultants paid N360m for verification
EFCC, ICPC helpless
Victimization, fraud and deployment of proxies to ‘corner’ juicy contracts are some of the operational methods of the Managing Director/Chief Executive of the Nigeria Electricity Liability Management Company Ltd (NELMCO), Dr. Samuel Agbogun, a whistleblower has alleged.
NELMCO is a special purpose agency set up by the Federal Government to manage stranded liabilities of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), including the staff pension of retirees and non-core assets approximating N300 billion. It started effective operations in January, 2010.
The agency’s board, chaired by Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala, has the Director General of BPE, a director in the Ministry of Power and a director (Revenue and Investment) in the Accountant-General’s office as members, with Agbogun as secretary.
The whistleblower alleged, in a petition to the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), that Agbogun uses a syndicate of about 36 companies and some NELMCO staff to defraud the company.
According to the petitioner, suspended Special Assistant to Agbogun, Mr Toluwase Abejirin, who spoke exclusively to New Telegraph in Abuja, Umezal Nigeria Limited and Muse Engineering Company are among the companies the agency’s boss uses to siphon government funds. Also in the syndicate are CEA Solutions and Lily Emeya & Co which Aboderin alleged the MD enlisted to draft Terms of Reference (TOR) for physical verification of PHCN assets, a brief that had already been concluded and submitted to NELMCO by a committee set up for that purpose.
Others include some key members of staff and the MD’s brother-inlaw, Mr. Seyi Awe, who he elevated to replace the personal assistant as a signatory to NELMCO’s account when he found Abejirin an unwilling accomplice in defrauding the Federal Government.
“Dr. Agbogun also engaged consultants to carry out another verification exercise for N360 million in order to access funds, all in the name of due diligence,” Aboderin revealed. He further told New Telegraph that NELMCO Tenders Evaluation Committee, which he headed, advertised in the Federal Tender Journal “and companies applied for lots but the MD discarded the work of the committee and awarded some of the plum jobs to his cronies without considering companies that applied”.
In the heat of the spat between Abejirin and Agbogun, the NELMCO MD wrote the Director-General of the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE) on September 1, 2011 and ordered the removal of the former from the PHCN Liquidation Committee and his replacement with Mr. Makki A. Yalleman.
Other allegations contained in the petition include a bloated staff list, inflated contracts, and deliberate overpayment of estacode in hard currency and award of contracts beyond his approved limit. From New Telegraph investigations and confidential documents obtained, NELMCO management later suspended Aboderin after he objected to the goings on, curiously accusing him of failing to submit the originals of his credentials, a claim the latter dismissed as unfounded and groundless.
All efforts mounted by Abejirin to secure the intervention of the EFCC, ICPC, BPE, Federal Ministry of Finance and House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions were ineffective. A source said the antigraft agencies are helpless in the matter. “It looks like they are not even interested in the petition, despite the documents submitted”.
When New Telegraph sought specific response from NELMCO’s MD at the agency’s headquarters in Abuja, it was impossible to see him after four visits. At the fourth call, a certain Nnamdi who claimed he is the agency’s media officer pleaded that Agbogun was defending the company’s budget at the National Assembly and requested more time.
The same Nnamdi later asked our reporter to submit his bank account number so the agency can make some bulk payment on condition that he drops his investigation and rather publishes a public relations material he would send and which he e-mailed to our reporter. Before press time, when New Telegraph reporter obtained the MD’s number and called him directly, he replied with a sms text that he was in a meeting but neither called back nor confirmed a date he would respond to the allegations.
Agbogun retired from PHCN in 2006 and later joined BPE as a director. While serving as the Director of Power in BPE, he was also the MD/ CEO of NELMCO. He was disengaged from BPE in 2009 in compliance with government directive which states that any director who has served for eight years should proceed on retirement.
But instead of complying, Agbogun re-emerged as NELMCO’s Managing Director and Chief Executive. According to Abejirin, “Dr. Agbogun vindictively demoted and re-designated me from his Special Assistant to Principal Manager and eventually sacked me when he found me an unwilling accomplice in defrauding the Federal Government.
“He found me confrontational and removed me as a signatory to NELMCO account and replaced me with his brother-in-law, Seyi Awe. “Dr. Agbogun also engaged consultants to carry out another verification exercise in order to access funds all in the name of due diligence for over N360 million,” he further told New Telegraph.
“We advertised in the Federal Tender Journal, companies applied for lots. I was the head of the Tenders Evaluation Committee. He discarded all we did and awarded a few of the jobs to his cronies without considering those who duly applied.”
From New Telegraph findings, Abejirin was employed (Ref: N E L M C O – HRD-03-005-2010 dated 25 January, 2010) with effect from 1st February 2010 as SA to NELMCO’s MD with his core schedules as advising the MD/CE on financial and technical matters and to prepare presentations for use at seminars and conferences.
But in heat of the spat between Abejirin and Agbogun, the latter wrote the Director-General BPE (dated 1st September, 2011) and ordered the removal of the former from the PHCN Liquidation Committee and his replacement with Yalleman. “Dr. Agbogun has even resorted to threatening my life as he boasts that he would derail every possible effort I make at bringing him to book”, Abejirin further told New Telegraph.
Source: News Telegraph Online.
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