In May 2016, the Global Fund (GF) published its second Country Audit of its grants to Nigeria.
As in the first, in 2011, it uncovered widespread mismanagement and looting of the resources meant for confronting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. So outraged was the GF, which in 10 years had sent about $1.2bn to Nigeria, that it threatened to end its assistance completely.
Between 2003 and 2006, Nigerian organizations signed 15 grants totaling over $682million, of which $474.5million was disbursed to them. Officials of those organizations had then gone to town, widely converting some of the money into personal use.
Notably, the Federal Government-owned National Action Committee on HIV/AIDS (NACA) was found to have disbursed some programme funds into personal bank accounts.
Another organization illegally transferred nearly $12m into non-programme-related bank accounts abroad, and round-tripped the funds back to its Nigeria local account.
Subsequently, the GF investigated the Yakubu Gowon Centre for International Cooperation (YGC), which received $172 million during the period but which, among other infringements, illegally transferred nearly $16m to third party foreign bank accounts.
A special report cited one of YGC’s practices involving the manipulation of GF grant funds delivered to them in US dollars for Nigerian Naira. “The OIG investigation found that, between 2005 and 2009, YGC conducted at least 61 of these currency exchange transactions, exchanging approximately US$ 22 million in grant fund disbursements with 35 different companies and four individuals,” it said.
It was also discovered that YGC diverted proceeds of currency transactions to non-GF-related bank accounts, thereby exposing grant monies to possible money laundering and other serious criminalities. Among others, the OIG recommended that the GF “immediately terminate YGC as a Principal Recipient and bar any future participation of this entity in any capacity in Global Fund grant programs…”
A disgusted GF gave this example of how nauseating it was in the period covered in the first report: “Money was siphoned to a person arrested in 2003 for money laundering and smuggling diamonds that are mined and sold to support the war.”
But once international news of the Nigeria malfeasance broke, the PDP government of one Goodluck Jonathan plunged into pretend-outrage mode, publicly pledging an aggressive investigation.
But that was only a front for the consumption of the international community: Not a single person was ever brought to justice, and the government said not an additional word.
Other GF reports on Nigeria, available on its website, reveal an embarrassing variety of practices over the years, including the forgery of hundreds of airline tickets; collusion with hotels and vendors, large-scale irregularities in the procurement of equipment and motor vehicles; and ‘self-procurement,’ (in which the Global Fund grant is charged the price of assets already purchased and held as inventory).
Nonetheless, in 2015, Nigerians flushed Mr. Jonathan down the sewers of history, largely because one Muhammadu Buhari waved the corruption broom so frantically and cried so hard out of both eyes for a crack at leadership that in desperation, Nigerians carried him on their shoulders to Eagle Square in Abuja.
Into his laps, then, fell the 2016 GF audit report. It showed that nothing had changed: Nigerian officials still treated the grants as their private ATM, and the GF used terms such as: discrepancies; unsupported expenditures; extensive evidence of systematic embezzlement; fraudulent practices and collusion; irregularity or fraud; and misappropriation.
That was when the Buhari administration, like its predecessor in 2011, pressed the pretend-outrage, “make-the-international-
It flailed out in three directions: First, it ordered the EFCC to undertake a full investigation of the misappropriations, including previous audits. Second, it set up an investigative panel, chaired by Health Minister Isaac Adewole, to review all the GF programmes in Nigeria (whatever that meant). Third, it asked another panel, headed by Auditor General Samuel Ukura, to review all GF financial transactions in the country (whatever that meant).
That was in May 2016. But although the panels were asked to report within four weeks, it was the last the Nigerian public would hear of the matter, the government lapsing into indifference. As with its predecessor, it identified no perpetrator and prosecuted nobody.
But hold it: it turns out it the Buhari administration did do something: it “paid off” the Global Fund.
“The government has refunded the US$5.8 million in recoverable amounts…,” the GF says in a new, follow-up report published last month, February 2018, which has somehow evaded the attention of the press. The government somehow accomplished this without identifying any of the serial looters dating from 2003 let alone prosecuting any of them.
But what are the odds: two critical audits, two governments of two political parties, but the same philosophical indifference, with the current government quietly refunding to the world body nearly $6m in “recoverable funds.”
Where, when and from whom did the Buhari government recover the funds it refunded? In the 2016 audit, the GF stopped short of identifying several of the guilty officials by name, home address and phone numbers. Despite that, the government, through three different “investigations” of its own, could find nobody or company. Where did it find the money?
This says several things. One is that Nigerians have been stabbed twice: first when the officials looted the grants, unconcerned how many citizens died of disease; and the second time when the government deployed funds that could have been used to build hospitals or buy food and medicine, to fend off the pressure from the GF.
The revelation also seems to confirm the existence of a shadowy federal cabal or mechanism behind the looting of GF grants in Nigeria, reminiscent of the looting of funds meant for implementing the MDGs; the Presidential Initiative on the North East (PINE)funds; and the Saudi Arabia donation to IDPs.
Remember: the MDGs funds—$1billion per year—have been disappearing since 2006. Remember: in June 2017, officials looted a foreign Ramadan gift of 200 tonnes of dates to the IDPs and sold them in open markets. And in November, a review of PINE byUNDP and the National Human Rights Commission exposed a shameless pattern of stealing and criminal diversion of funds, food and other items sent to the same IDPS.
Those officials included Babachir Lawal, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who was eventually but reluctantly fired, but has—like those who brazenly looted the MDGs account, GF grants or the Saudi dates—enjoyed the tacit protection of the government. Perfectly in tune with the administration’s refusal to name any looters, no matter what.
But if the government can “recover” such amounts for the GF, why is it impossible to recover—or at least lock up the horrendous sums in the trillions of Naira—that former and present officials are holding in their accounts, most of it in Nigeria exposed by the Biometric Verification Number (BVN) exercise the CBN undertook recently?
As of 2018, the GF has signed grants of $2,473,802,310 to Nigeria, of which it has disbursed $1,938,542,360. It is ironic when the government gets in the way of its own people again and again, rather than behind them.
The question is how Mr. Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo sleep at night.
· Twitter: @SonalaOlumhense
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