Reps, NEMA disagree over N1.6bn relief fund

Members of a House of Representatives panel and the Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Mustapha Maihaja, yesterday disagreed over the sum of N1.6 billion spent on relief materials for flood victims last year.

The Committee on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness is probing allegations of abuse of due process in the procurement of the relief materials to flood victims in 16 states from the N1.6bn approved by the Federal Government.

The panel, presided over by the deputy chairman, Ali Isa (APC, Gombe) said during the continuation of an investigative hearing yesterday in Abuja that the amount, approved for 16 states, was not judiciously applied.

While the lawmakers insisted that due process was not followed, Maihaja stood his ground that NEMA did not violate any law and that they met all the requirements before engaging companies for the procurement.

He said “We complied with the Procurement Act to the best of our ability. As far as we’re concerned, we’ve complied with all the requirements. We’ve not violated the Act. We did our best, and we even wrote to the BPP for a letter of clearance (exemption), which they issued us. We’re guided by the Procurement Act in all the procurements that we do.

“We saved this country over N1.4bn because when the rice contract price was given as N24,000 per bag, we insisted it would be N16,000.”

He also revealed that N1.5billion suspicious contracts were awarded in the agency before his assumption of duty.

The panel therefore directed that the six directors of the agency recently suspended should appear before it today to respond to some questions. The lawmakers equally directed NEMA to provide details of about 6,776 tonnes of rice donated to the government by the Chinese Government.

The hearing continues today, where the lawmakers would take on NEMA’s intervention on the Northeast region.