Malami, Ahmed Face Arrest Over $200m Paid To Whistleblowers

The House of Reps says the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami faces arrest over a $200 million paid to whistleblowers.

The only remedy for the minister and his counterpart, the Minister of Finance Zainab Ahmed, the lawmakers said is to appear before the House Adhoc Committee investigating the issue, to shed lights on how the whistleblower was paid without recourse to the National Assembly in flagrance of the law.

According to the chairman of the committee, Mark Gbillah, Malami gave the approval to pay whistleblowers after assisting the government in the recovery of fund for the federal government.

But Gbilah said the amount recovered is not known to the House for it to be able to appropriate it as provided by the constitution, adding that whatever must be paid to whistle blowers who assisted in the recovery of such funds must have statutory approval form NASS.

To compound the problem, the chairman of the committee said, the two ministers have refused to appear before the House despite inviting them.

The House said it has no option than to extend another invitation to them following which they will order for their arrest if they fail to appear before the committee.

“We have not been getting any form of cooperation from the Ministry of Finance and Attorney General’s office regarding this investigation despite a series of correspondents sent to them on this matter that we are investigating. We’ve seen documentation from the Accountant General’s office, where the minister of finance approved the payment of a substantially significant amount of money to so-called whistle-blowers where details of monies recovered were not provided,” Gbilah said on Wednesday.

“We’ve heard media reports by the federal government indicating that millions of dollars were recovered through whistle-blower revelations on behalf of the country. But we as a parliament have not seen where those monies were routed through the constitutional appropriation process before they were expended. The constitution is very clear about the receipt and expenditure of Nigeria’s money.

“We’ve looked at the functions of the Attorney General’s office and we’ve not seen any statutory powers provided for the Attorney General by the constitution to determine how Nigeria’s money should be spent.

“There was an incident about a whistleblower who made a formal report to Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) about $200m paid into two companies accounts Biz Plus, and GSCL allegedly for consultancy services, which allegedly were approved, they said by the Attorney General’s office on the approval of Mr President.

“We need the Honourable Minister of Finance, and the Attorney General of the Federation to appear before this House to provide clarity on the inflows that have come in from whistleblowers’ recoveries, and about these monies that were recovered, and the CBN is required to provide information that has been provided by these whistleblowers about substantial amounts of monies that were paid supposedly and allegedly for consultancy services when there’s no record of any agreement entered into by those companies regarding any services.

“These are very weighty allegations and as a responsible House, we owe everybody fair hearing and a benefit of doubt, and this is what we’ve been seeking to accord those who have been mentioned in these allegations.

“But we find it un-actionable that the Honourable Minister of Finance and the Attorney General of Federation have not bothered to respond to any of the correspondence from the committee and this in our opinion shows a lack of regard not only to the Institution of House, but that of the National Assembly as a whole,” he said.