According to documents available to Daily Sun, the money, which has variously been alleged as either missing or stolen, which NAPEP incurred as it tried to cut corners and side track its original promoters in a bid to take the business off them.
At the centre of the raging scandal is the procurement and distribution of the now popular Keke NAPEP (tricycles).
NAPEP which was established in 2001 by former President Olusegun Obasanjo with an executive fiat is the primary agency charged with the responsibility of coordinating and monitoring all poverty eradication activities nationwide. However, the agency in the last few weeks has been involved in various forms of financial scandals that point accusing fingers at its leadership.
According to the findings of an internally constituted committee believed to have been recently set up by the leadership of NAPEP under the National Coordinator, Dr. Magnus Kpakol, NAPEP had amassed a staggering debt of N417m through unpaid debts owed to it by Keke Operators and Riders Association of Nigeria (KORAN).
This, according to the investigation, was shocking, since the initial arrangement for the sale of the tricycles was based on a pre-payment arrangement that did not give rise for any debt.
According to finding which have also gone as for as the National Assembly, a few insiders within NAPEP, in a secret more to edge out a company originally given the right to import and distribute the poverty eradication tricycles had over looked the laid down procedure for its procurement and sale, and in the process brought a whopping N417 million debt on NAPEP.
Things have become so muddled up that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been brought into the matter.
Among the things the commission is set to unravel is why the licencee of the Keke NAPEP, Autobalm Techniques Limited, which originally floated the idea and actually won the contract to supply the tricycles sudden failed to supply the third tranche after promptly supplying and disbursing the first two batches.
It also wants to know how the contractor could get such a huge job without a formal contract from the federal government. EFCC also desires to authenticate an existing contract said to have been signed on behalf of NAPEP by Kpakol but which the National Coordinator is alleged to have repudiate. There is also a subtle move to unearth how all these relate to the security factionalisation of KORAN, the alleged threat of the Customs to auction the Keke tricycles which have since been trapped at the ports since the controversy began.
Although the Kpakol leadership had initially denied the debts, it still went ahead to constitute the high powered committee to find ways of retrieving the debts.
The committee discovered that KORAN had been supplied a total of 3,190 by the contractor amounting to N802,042,719.50 less insurance, training and handling charges. However, KORAN had remitted a total of N475,519,500 which unfortunately could not be proved because it lacked any evidences of remittances to NAPEP. Also, KORAN could not produce a draft or cheque for the balance sum of N326,523,219.50 claiming to the committee that they had problems with their bankers.
The internal committee said it also rejected moves by KORAN to re-negotiate and schedule payment of the balance sum, which it wanted extended till December, 2010 based on invitations by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to NAPEP. However, further investigations shocked the committee as they found out that a facility they thought was KORAN’s was actually owned by a company called Trimidan Limited believed to have been founded by an executive member of KORAN. Meanwhile, the picture of Kpakol was boldly displayed within the premises.
The committee also observed that the company was currently assembling Keke tricycles painted in National colours and tagged Keke NAPEP but of which NAPEP officials did not know about.
So with the exception of Kpakol’s presence in the company, no NAPEP official was aware of this new company, an act which the committee described as “criminal act of impersonation”.
The committee also alleged that this private company was using government subsidy to produce tricycles and then selling beyond the government recommended price intended to alleviate poverty. The committee rounded up its report by indicating to Kpakol the clash of interest by KORAN headed by someone who had incorporated a company and set up an office to do the same thing that NAPEP was doing through KORAN.
The EFCC is also to unravel how NAPEP leadership extended the credit lines to a private firm, contrary to the structured arrangement as provided in the initial agreement with KORAN that, every lifting of product must be accompanied with a bank guarantee, covering the “fixed and firm value” of their requisition.
Meanwhile, the Senate Committee on National Planning Economic Affairs and Poverty Alleviation is also said to have thrown the searchlight on NAPEP recently.
The committee is accusing the body of lacking monitoring and evaluation despite the provision of N1.850bn to it for that function. The Committee led by Senator Zaynab Kure also discovered that NAPEP in its submissions provided fake names and unverifiable addresses. It also noted that NAPEP skewed its own funds totaling N7.265bn in favour of private banks to the disadvantage of NAPEP itself and poor Nigerians for which the funds were meant.
The committee seemed to believe that there was a deliberate move to create a business for some people out of NAPEP, while edging out the original proponents of the idea. It noted: NAPEP was a creation of an Executive fiat with no legal backing whatsoever to regulate its activities” and had used “unserious threats of litigation and termination of contract on the contractor ‘Autobahn Techniques’ causing unnecessary confusion and delays towards the completion of contracts given; while most of the Keke NAPEP allocated to states were diverted to the open market and even displayed for sale in some cities at exorbitant prices of N390,000 to N410,000 per unit.”
Curiously, however, the committee in its recommendation, merely drew the attention of Kpakol to the anomalies, without suggesting punishment or actions to be taken.
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