A report by the House of Representatives Committee on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness has revealed the misappropriation and misapplication of N33 Billion by the Director-General of the National Emergency Management Agency NEMA Engr. Mustapha Maihaja.
Recall that NEMA is the agency saddled with the responsibility of providing relief materials to Internally Displaced Persons IDPs in the North-East region.
The report which was approved after clause by clause consideration by the House at the Committee of the Whole was titled: “Need to Investigate the Violation of Public Trust in the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and approve the recommendations therein”.
The Committee Chairman Hon. Ali Isa JC had while giving a summary of the findings of the committee’s investigation into the matter said that NEMA under Maihaja could not account for 6,779 metric tonnes of rice donated by the Chinese Government to IDPs in the North-East region of Nigeria.
The Committee healsman said the that the N33 billion represents the Federal Government’s intervention for the alleviation of the suffering IDPs in the region.
The Committee has condemned in its entirety, the display of insensitivity to the plight of the IDPs and flood victims by the NEMA management in the handling of the relief materials.
The lawmakers therefore recommended that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission ICPC and the Economic and Financial Commission EFCC should investigate the matter further.
That they should recover N1,50, 000,000.00 being subsidies cost of 5000 metric tonnes of rice from the NEMA DG who claimed to have donated it to the World Food Programme when they were ready to pay for it or import same.
They further recommended that a balance of 5,000 metric tonnes of rice claimed to have been supplied by Olams Nigeria Ltd and 3 Brothers Ltd at a cost of about N1.5billion to NEMA that was not received by states of the North-East region be recovered from the Director-General.
The Committee said the N33 billion is the sum total of prices of each bag of rice supplied by the Chinese Government at the cost of N11,500 each and other interventions of the Federal Government.
These interventions of federal government came through the funds from Ecological Funds Office of the Presidency, the Ministry of Budget and Planning as well as releases by the Federal Ministry of Finance to the agency from the insurgency period in the North-East and flood ravaged eleven states of the federation.
