The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has asked the National Assembly Clerk, Mohammed Sani Omolori, and the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Budget and National Planning to produce documents on the contracts awarded by the Assembly and on the budget.
Omolori was asked to furnish the commission with the details of all contracts awarded and executed by the Assembly from June 2015 to date, while the Permanent Secretary is to provide documents on the budget.
This is as the agency yesterday grilled former House of Reps Committee Chairman on Appropriations, Abdulmumin Jibrin, as probe into the budget padding scandal begins.
Jibrin had accused Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yusuff Lasun, Chief Whip Alhassan Ado Doguwa, Minority Leader Leo Ogor and nine others of padding the budget with N284 billion.
In the letter to Omolori, EFCC demanded a “list of all contracts awarded by the Assembly from June 2015 to date.”
The letter said the Assembly must “provide the beneficiaries of the contracts, the account details into which payments were made, the total amount already paid for each contract as well as the outstanding balances where applicable.”
The EFCC asked the Permanent Secretary to provide it with a “draft copy of the 2016 budget submitted to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari and the final copy returned to the President by the National Assembly.”
A source told The Nation that: “Although no timeline was indicated in the two letters, the Clerk and the Permanent Secretary are expected to treat it with dispatch.
“All these documents are vital to the ongoing investigation of all the petitions with us.
“We engaged Jibrin between 1pm and 5pm on the allegations in the petition he filed before this commission including those already in the public domain and the new ones presented to us.
“The allegations include alleged insertions of N40billion projects into the 2016 Budget by the Speaker, padding of the budget with projects worth over N284billion and padding of the budget by somecommittee chairmen.”
The source listed the new allegations as follows: Duplication of contracts by Speaker Yakubu Dogara; Renting of Guest Houses for the Speaker at very high rate; Receiving of self-rent by the Speaker and others at inflated cost when they have already got accommodation allowances; abuse of office and of funds by House leadership.
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