Ibrahim Magu has disclosed that the money stolen by 32 entities (human and
corporate) between 2011 and 2015, is well over N1.3 trillion.
Magu disclosed this in his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the
2019 First Batch Conversion Training Programme to Procurement Cadre for
Federal Parastatal and Agencies, organised by the Bureau of Public
Procurement, BPP, in Lagos on Monday, March 25, 2019.
Magu, in a paper delivered on his behalf by the Commission’s Secretary,
Ola Olukoyede decried this huge financial loss on the country, and noted
that “one third of this money, using world bank rates and cost, could have
comfortably been used to construct well over 500km of roads; build close
to 200 schools; educate about 4000 children from primary to tertiary
levels at N25million per child; build 20,000 units of two-bedroom houses
across the country and do even more.
“The cost of this grand theft, therefore, is that these roads, schools and
houses will never be built and these children will never have access to
quality education because a few rapacious individuals had cornered for
themselves what would have helped secure the lives of the future
generations, thereby depriving them of quality education and healthcare,
among others.”
He stated that the poor state of procurement process in Nigeria was one of
the major reasons why corruption has continued to thrive in government
agencies and parastatals.
The EFCC boss further noted that the training, organised by the BPP was
aimed at giving the participants the tools, knowledge and understanding
they would need to carry out their duties in their respective places of
primary assignments in an efficient and transparent manner.
“I sincerely hope that at the end of this training, we will see a few
cases of financial propriety in our procurement processes in government
agencies and parastatal. Indeed, corruption could kill Nigeria, if we do
not scale up our proficiency in contract and procurement management
process,” Magu said.
He further observed that “the establishment of the EFCC in 2003 was
because of the determination of the Federal Government to combat
fraudulent activities of some Nigerians and foreigners, mismanagement in
the economic sector, corruption by public officials and lack of
accountability and transparency in government dealings.”
He identified some of the fraudulent practices in procurement processes in
Nigeria to include: kickbacks, conflict of interests, fraud in the
bidding process, bid suppression, collusive bidding, bid rotation and
market division. Others according to him are: co-mingling of contracts,
change order abuse, cost mischarging, defective pricing, false statement
and claim, phantom vendors, product substitution, unnecessary purchases
and purchases for personal use or resale.
Magu expressed confidence that Nigeria still has patriotic and credible
individuals who would do all within their abilities to uphold the
credibility and honesty required for leadership in public offices.