“ That on the 1st of September, 2020, Ahmad Salihijo Ahmad declared his assets with the Code of Conduct Bureau.

“ That the suspect declared only two bank accounts with the Code of Conduct Bureau.

“ That the suspect made false declaration at the Code of Conduct Bureau as he stated that he does not have any factory or enterprise while in reality, he is a director in five (5) companies and shareholder(owner) in four (4) companies.

“ That the funds were meant to fulfil the Federal Government’s economic sustainability plan of ‘’Energy for All’ aimed at mass rural solar power lightening.

“ That the agency decided to procure basically solar mini grid and solar lights in selected health care facilities and surrounding communities in the Federation

“ That for all the contracts proposed to be awarded by the agency, Selective Tendering procurement method was adopted and it was imperative to therefore seek ‘’certificate of no objection’’ from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP).

“ That the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) issued ‘’Certificate of No Objection’ while emphasizing that the agency should invite and request financial quotation from various companies for each lot, before awarding the contracts.

“ That for most of the lots, the agency did not heed the directive of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) but rather went ahead to award most of the contracts to their choice contractors without inviting other approved contractors for each lot.

“ That this approach did not give fair value to government as financial quotation was not sought and received for consideration from other contractors as approved by the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP).

“ That the Rural Electrification Agency therefore awarded a total number of (77) contracts and (7) consultancy jobs to various contractors.

“ That the narration of the contract award as furnished by the agency indicates contract splitting as contracts with same project narration which should have been awarded as a single project, were split in numerous bits.

That the splitting of the contracts into numerous bits below (N250,000,000.00) allowed for the approval of the Managing Director of the Agency .

“That the approval limit for the Managing Director for ‘works’’ in 2020 and 2021 was (N250,000,000.00) & below as any contract cost higher than that would have warranted Ministerial Tenders Board approval outside the control of the Managing Director of the Agency.

“That payments totalling (N313,111,070.40) were made by the agency to various companies not captured or approved by the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP).

“ That overpayments totalling about N310,000,000.00 were made to three contractors, which exceeded the contract award amount.

“That five contracts totalling N583,671,221.67 were furnished as Covid 19 contracts by the agency but Remita platform being the central source of all payments, did not reveal any form of payments to those companies; hence these contracts were used to pad the agency’s submission to the Commission in a bid to camouflage its misappropriation of the said sum.

“That suspicious payments totalling over (N80,000,000.00) were made to various staff of the agency under the guise of fictitious narrations such as ‘survey and data collection’’ and economic sustainability programme’’

“ That for some of the contracts, payment vouchers were not raised while for others, relevant supporting documents were not attached in contravention of the Financial Regulation.

“That six consultants were engaged to serve as Project Owner’s Engineers entrusted with the responsibility of monitoring and evaluating the extent of execution of Covid 19 projects across the country.

“That the Executive Director Corporate Services, Mr Alaba Netufo has been engaging and participating in the management and running of a private business whilst being a public officer, while also emphasizing that some notable contractors of the agency had on several occasions paid monies into the account of Necol (Nigeria) Limited, which is his company.

*The agency coerces contractors who execute zonal intervention and capital projects to part with (5%) of the contract sum which they tag as ‘’monitoring and evaluation’’ charges, and these monies, which are usually paid in cash to senior/management staff of the agency, are more often than not, embezzled.

* That payments totalling (N728,915,229.04) made by the agency to (15) various contractors in the year 2023 for consultancy jobs were channels for stealing and diversion of public funds majorly because by virtue of the job roles of certain staff of the agency being zonal coordinators, project department as well as monitoring and evaluation department, it was unnecessary, ridiculous and alarming that external consultants were still engaged to execute the same responsibilities.

*Parallel Financial investigation is being carried out to establish the predicate crimes as well as its associated money laundering in a bid to prosecute all criminals and their accomplices while recovering the proceeds of crime.”

“ There was questionable award of contracts, and a significant portion of those contracts were either poorly executed or not executed at all, thereby leading to criminal diversion and stealing of public funds.

“That upon resumption in the Finance and Accounts Department in March 2023, he informed the staff of the department that monies were going to be paid into their bank accounts, which they have to remit for the purpose of ‘project monitoring’.

“ That consequently, between March and June 2023, payments totalling (N1,481,389,518.11) were fraudulently made by the Director of Finance and Accounts into the bank accounts of (8) staff members of the department as well as himself.

“ That the payments were made using ridiculous narrations such as ‘’implementation of performance management system and compliance monitoring’’, ‘’ programme for monitoring investment and development of power sector’, International / Local Investment and Development of Power Sector’’ etc.

“That the said payments were made by the Director of Finance and Accounts to the said accounts without necessary approvals, procurement process documents and other substantiating documents as required.

“ That upon receipt of the said funds in (iii), the said Director of Finance and Accounts gave instructions for disbursement to the staffs.

“ That Usman Kwakwa, being one of the staff in (iii), was at that time, the Personal Assistant to the Director of Finance and Accounts.

“ That the Director of Finance and Accounts instructed (7) staff members listed in

(iii) (1) – (7), to transfer bulk of the funds to Usman Kwakwa as well as other persons being his allies and some other staff of the agency.

“ That the Director of Finance and Accounts further instructed Usman Kwakwa to disburse the collected funds to his friends and allies.

“ That upon receipt, the Director of Finance and Accounts instructed his allies in (ix) to purchase various choice properties and assets being plots of land, houses and a car in his favour .

“ That the Director of Finance and Accounts also directed Usman Kwakwa to convert the total sum of (N159,608,464.38) to United Stated Dollars; this he did using two Bureau De Change Operators namely Laba Ibrahim and Ahmed Musa.

“ That Usman Kwakwa also transferred various sums of monies totalling

(N115,749,000.00) to  some senior staff and management of the agency.

“That Director of  Finance and Accounts benefitted over N414,346,343.51 from the disbursements.

“ That the balance remained with the staff members who had already disbursed bulk of the payments as instructed.

“That investigation into the misappropriated (N1.2) billion naira had earlier been carried out by the SIT, ONSA as well as the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offence Commission (ICPC).

“ That some of the balance remaining with the recipients listed in (iii) were recovered by the two agencies in (xvi).