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Corruption: Covid-19 Procurements Inflated By Govt MDA’s

Published

5 years ago

October 29, 2020

The Gleamer

…Ministry of Health buys face mask at N10,000 each

….Stakeholders kick

Joel Ajayi

Federal Government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies have been indicted reports of making inflated payments on Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) and other items purchased to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.

The stakeholders were reacting to investigations by DATAPHYTE and Civic Hive which exposed government MDAs of breaching procurement processes in the fight against COVID-19 on Wednesday in Abuja, during a radio program, PUBLIC CONSCIENCE produced by the Progressive Impact Organization for Community Development, PRIMORG.

It will be recalled that an investigation by DATAPHYTE in July 2020, indicted five government MDAs to have awarded COVID-19 emergency procurements worth ₦451.18 million to unverifiable contractors.

While CIVICHIVE’s investigation also exposed how the Federal Ministry of Health awarded 15 contracts worth N444.28 million out of 29 COVID-19 contracts to a single company.

Victor Ndukwe, an Editor at DATAPHYTE stated that there was less value for the monies spent by MDAs on procurement of COVID-19 PPEs. Stressing that despite COVID-19 pandemic prompted emergency spending, accountability was lacking in the procurements made by MDAs, alleging that companies and contractors took advantage of the times to siphon public funds.

Ndukwe lamented that despite the report on the ground, no government MDA or individual has been questioned by anti-graft agencies or was any panel set up by the Federal Government to look into the allegations.

On holding MDAs accountable, he noted that the Bureau of Public Procurement can only report a breach of procurement processes to the National Assembly which takes another long process.

He advocated for real-time auditing of the MDAs to enable the nation to curb corruption in the procurement process.

“The way forward will be real-time auditing and as soon as these expenditures are blown out of order, whoever that should be brought to book should be brought to book immediately,” Ndukwe advised.

The Manager of CIVIC HIVE, Iyanuoluwa Bolarinwa who featured on the program agreed that there was no value for money spent by MDAs as far as COVID-19 expenditures were concerned.

His words: “As at the time of the investigation, N3.3 billion was going to be spent by just seven MDAs. “The contracts as a whole, there were a lot of shrouded deals that were done and it made us raised questions for example; The Ministry of health spent N37 million for just one thousand eight hundred and eight pieces of facemasks which literary put the facemasks at about N10,000 each when we were done with our calculation.

“We also found out that some of these companies and contractors do not exist in the Corporate Affairs Commission.”

Bolarinwa frowned at the bloated prices for PPEs and had these to add: “with the scarce resource at Nigeria’s disposal, we should do something different. How can one company get 15 out of 29 contracts from a particular ministry, that is actually a red flag,” he moaned.

On her part, the founder, Good Governance Awareness Initiative (GGAI), Maureen Onwukwe, lauded DATAPHYTE, and CIVIC HIVE for the investigations, as well as PRIMORG for amplifying the reports.

She expressed shock that such reports have not been acted upon by relevant government agencies and anti-graft agencies. She stressed that corruption of this magnitude will definitely affect foreign and local investors in Nigeria.

She called on President Muhammadu Buhari to swiftly swing into action, investigate and bring to book those found culpable of taking advantage of the pandemic to steal public funds by inflating payments. While urging citizens to always hold governments at all levels accountable.

The syndicated radio program is produced by PRIMORG with support from the MACARTHUR FOUNDATION.

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ELECTING A POPE: THE BURDEN OF MAKING CHOICES

Published

2 days ago

May 11, 2025

The Gleamer

By Olubunmi Mayaki

“Habemus papam!” which in the English Language means, “We have a Pope.” was pronounced by Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, a French Catholic prelate, His Eminence, Cardinal Dominique Mamberti from the iconic loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican City on Thursday 8 May 2025 after white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Those Latin words proclaimed to a tensed global audience the result of the election of a new Supreme Pontiff after the death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) on 21 April 2025 at the age of 88 years.

The Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, Cardinal Robert Prevost (Pope Leo XIV) emerged as primus inter pares (first among equals) from the cardinals after undergoing detailed election rituals, which have been the process of selecting the head of the 2000-year-old Catholic Church for centuries.

A papal conclave, the process by which a new Pope is selected, was held consisting of one hundred and thirty-three (133) College of Cardinals, drawn from different parts of the world converged at St. Peter’s Basilica for a public mass before heading to the Sistine Chapel to cast their votes to elect the 267th Pope. During the mass, part of the choir renditions reminded voters to remember their last day when they would stand before God in judgment to render their stewardship on earth, which is to prevent them from rigging the voting process. At the behest of the senior cardinal deacon, voting formalities were read to the electors, which included- oath-taking- “I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one whom I believe should be elected according to God”. Other processes are banning phones, jamming calls, forbidding speaking or contacting any of the candidates, voting rounds, spiritual pauses etc.

Looking at the voting process, one should be curious about how an election to pick a leader for a religious body could be so systematic and attract such global attention. It is a sharp contrast to elections where political leaders are chosen. Even in the so-called advanced democracies, we have seen electoral flaws and a dearth of political leaders. States are finding it difficult to pick genuine statesmen, giving rise to hegemonic leaders. These political imperia ums are emerging and stoking crises in their domain. Fallouts of elections are no longer favourable due to unpopular candidates forced on citizens.

Africa, as a case study, shows that no matter the rules put in place by the continent’s leaders, our election processes have been fraught with rigging, corruption and waste. In most cases, the leaders who set the rules are the violators of the same process. Governments conspire with electoral bodies to truncate election processes at will. Such political brigandage has destroyed the progress of the continent.

Closing this view, I hope that African leaders will take a cue from the Catholic Church’s election process to reinvigorate and rejig the continent’s faltering political process for the good of its people. Better still; political scholars from the continent can study the Catholic model. The common features of elections in most parts of Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, are riddled with vote rigging, violence, human rights abuse, repression, barbarism, crises, untold hardship, and sometimes, outright war. This is the bane of Africa’s development.

The burden of making good political choices should ordinarily rest on citizens. However, politicians have hijacked this process for selfish reasons. It has given birth to bad leaders. If we fail to get it right, what we see is what we get. That is the story of the world politics!

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