The Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEHUR) has commended the House of Representatives Committee on Anti-Malaria, HIV/AIDS, and Tuberculosis for inviting the Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof Mohammed Ali Pate, and the Permanent Secretary, Daju Kachollom, to appear before it, over allegations of the misappropriation of $300 million meant to tackle malaria since 2021.
In a statement on Sunday, Sunday Ogonu, National Coordinator of CEDEHUR, also called punishment of anyone found culpable.
The statement read in part, “We had earlier raised an alarm that the Ministry of Health had allowed a UN Agency, United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) to get away with breaking terms of agreement entered into with the Nigerian government.
“The agreement simply provided that UNOPS would issue a tender in order to enlist local vendors who must be local manufacturers of long lasting insecticide treated nets for distribution across the country. This was aimed at stopping malaria related deaths, which has made Nigeria number one country where these deaths occur.
“The scourge of malaria has contributed to depopulation, poor man power, and has sabotaged the economy as the government has continued to look for ways to solve the problems.
“This informed the reason why the federal government sought a loan from the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) to fight the disease.
“Unfortunately, the agreement has been breached by UNOPS. in order to kill local industries, UNOPS has been making frantic efforts to import the nets when the agreement between it and the federal government clearly provided that, in order to support local businesses and companies, and for future purposes, UNOPS must recruit ONLY local vendors with production capacity to manufacture the mosquito nets.
“It left much to be desired that UNOPS staged a tender, concluded the tender and said three vendors qualified to carry out the project, among which one is a local manufacturer with the capacity to deliver on the project while the other two are vendors with capacity to source for the nets for the project.
“Not only that, UNOPS, having unilaterally cancelled the tender at a stage it was supposed to issue letters of offer to the winner, decided to announce the commencement of foreign tender in contravention of the agreement with the Federal government.
“It also breached the terms of agreement the national assembly had entered into with the federal government before granting the loan, that’s, that the local companies must be allowed to manufacture the nets and that even if it’s one company, it must be given a certificate of no objections other things being equal. Those conditions were met but UNOPS decided to begin to play a smart one.
“This is more so when at a meeting with the 9th House of Representatives Committee on Health UNOPS accepted that the local company won the tender but was questioned about its capacity. But the committee members pointed out a capacity report of the World Bank and Ministry of Health which stated that the local company had enough production capacity. The committee then asked UNOPS to quickly award the tender to prevent more deaths.
“It’s on record that the immediate past Minister of health also warned UNOPS of consequences of circumventing the federal government order and the joint agreement which included an aggrieved vendor could stop the project by going to Court.
“In the face of this, the ministry of health has allowed UNOPS to get away with it. The House of Representatives which began the investigation last week accused the ministry of refusal to appear before it, rather, that the ministry has been busy using sureties and highly placed persons to beg the House to shelve the investigation to allow for foreign importation of the nets. How unpatriotic!
“We hold that the national assembly must insist on the appearance of the minister for health, the permanent secretary, UNOPS and other officials to explain why they looted the $300m.
“Secondly, the House must invite the anti-graft agency to ensure anyone found culpable is punished.
“Three, the project must immediately be withdrawn from UNOPS. There’s no need enlisting a foreign company which has in many countries accused of being corrupt to recruit who will supply Nigeria mosquito nets. This bad UNOPS image is playing out clearly and Nigeria must stop doing business with it.
“Four, the government must ensure the vendors already selected during the bidding process are allowed to quickly supply Nigeria these mosquito nets as the deaths from mosquitoes are ravaging the land.
“The company already selected must be supported and other local companies too must be supported to stand strong. By doing so, they will provide jobs and ensure loans obtained for such projects are used here for development instead of obtaining loans with high interest to develop other countries, which UNOPS is hellbent on doing.”
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