New investigation has revealed how the Deputy Senate President and other lawmakers swallowed huge sums in a failed bid to review constitutional amendments.
Ike Ekweremadu
Fresh reports have shown that Nigerian federal lawmakers, led by incumbent Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, and former Deputy Speaker Emeka Ihedioha, withdrew a princely N7.75 billion of public funds in four years to purportedly review sections of the 1999 Constitution.
In an investigation lasting months, Premium Times found that between 2011 and 2015, the 53-member House of Representatives Ad-hoc Constitution Review Committee and its 49-member counterpart in the Senate in the 7th National Assembly withdrew N3,250,000,000.00 and N4,500,000,000.00 respectively to purportedly execute the fourth alteration of the Constitution.
It is not immediately clear how the lawmakers spent the outrageous funds but insiders say a huge chunk of it was pocketed by members of the committees in what one source described as ‘unprecedented naira bazaar’ by a committee of the National Assembly’.
Officials of the committees continued to make withdrawal even long after the exercise was concluded. It remains unclear what those withdrawals were spent on.
The Committees, which operated independently, withdrew the monies in tranches from their accounts domiciled in an Abuja branch of the Guarantee Trust Bank.
Curiously, some of the withdrawals were made long after they submitted their final reports to both chambers for consideration and a few weeks before the general elections and the inauguration of the 8th National Assembly.
The Senate Committee was statutorily chaired by the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, while the House Committee was headed by the then Deputy Speaker, Emeka Ihedioha.
Documents obtained by PremiumTimes showed that the House Committee withdrew N500m of public funds on December 16, 2011; N500m on May 17, 2012; N250m on October 29, 2012; N250m on May 8, 2013; N250m on August 6, 2013; and N250m on November 11, 2013.
On February 20, 2014, it withdrew N250m; another N250m on May 27, 2014; N250m on August 21, 2014; N166.5m on a date not specified; and N83.5m on December 5, 2014.
The Committee further withdrew N83.33m on March 2, 2015 and the same amount on March 23, five days before the Presidential and National Assembly elections and on April 13, barely two days after this year’s governorship election.
Also, Premium Times checks revealed that the National Assembly was not in session at the time of the elections, and the committee had long concluded its assignments suggesting the withdrawals were dubious.
The document showed that the Senate Committee, on its part, operated two accounts, tagged “Account A” and “Account B”.
From Account A, like its House counterpart, the Committee collected N500m on December 16, 2011, the first after its inauguration.
Subsequent withdrawals it made are N500m on April 20, 2012; N250m on May 17, 2012; N250m on February 27, 2013; N250m on May 8, 2013; N250m on July 23, 2013; N250m on November 5, 2013; N250m on February 5, 2014; N250m on August 18, 2014; N83.3m on March 17, 2015 and another N83.3m on a date not specified.
The Committee also withdrew from its Account B the sum of N250m on May 22, 2014; N166.6m on November 25, 2014; N83.4m on December 5, 2014 and N83.3m on February 27, 2015.
Before the inauguration of the 7th National Assembly on June 6, 2011, the document also revealed, the Senate Committee withdrew from its Account A the sums of N125m on April 21, 2010; N250m on June 10, 2010; N125m on a date not specified; N250m on October 13, 2010; N250m on an unspecified date; and N250m on February 9, 2011.
The total amount the Committee withdrew from Account A stood at N3,916,666,667 and from Account B it withdrew a total of N583,333,333.
No proper accounting for the spent funds have been made, insiders say.
But those who should know say all these engagements could not have cost the nation more than N1billion altogether. They said some of the public sessions held in states were funded by state governments.
Authorities wouldn’t comment on withdrawals
The then Senate President, David Mark, could not be reached for comment on this story. He did not answer or return multiple calls. Neither did he respond to a text message sent to him.
So also was Mr. Ekweremadu, who spearheaded most of the spending.