12 April 2018•Update: 13 April 2018
By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS, Nigeria
Nigeria’s vice president is to testify before a parliamentary committee probing alleged fraudulent transactions and the unlawful suspension of some officers from the country's relief agency.
The parliament is currently investigating alleged mismanagement and fraud in the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), whose head Mustapha Maihaja is also being investigated.
Ali Isa, deputy chair of the House of Representatives committee on emergency and disaster management, told a public hearing in the capital Abuja that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo would appear before the committee to explain his roles in how six officials who opposed “certain fraudulent practices” in the agency were “unlawfully suspended.”
Osinbajo is the chairman of the agency's governing council, which the parliament heard was behind the “unlawful suspension.”
The officials were alleged to have raised issues with how multimillion-dollar contracts were awarded without due process. There were also allegations that relief materials meant for millions of victims of Boko Haram violence were being diverted.
Isa said Ibrahim Magu, the head of the country's anti-graft agency, and his customs counterpart Hameed Ali will testify in the matter.
The committee said Magu would give testimony on a report of the anti-graft agency on the suspended officials while the customs chief would clear the air on purported “irregularities” in the importation of 6,776 metric tons of rice the Chinese government donated for the victims of Boko Haram insurgency.
Nigeria’s relief agency has long been dogged by corruption allegations. Last year, secretary to the government Babachir Lawal was sacked after a parliamentary committee report indicted him in contract fraud tied to the welfare of the Boko Haram victims.
