Former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has publicly refuted allegations of financial impropriety made by the current administration under Governor Uba Sani.
The accusations, which involve an alleged diversion of ₦423 billion, were addressed during a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, where El-Rufai, through his former commissioners, criticized the claims as baseless and misleading.
During the conference, representatives for El-Rufai argued that the financial report released by the Kaduna State House of Assembly on June 5, 2024, which implicates the former administration in financial mismanagement, is fundamentally flawed.
The former commissioners highlighted the lack of concrete evidence and the arbitrary nature of the financial figures cited in the report.
They claimed the accusations were politically motivated, and aimed at tarnishing El-Rufai’s reputation and legacy.
The commissioners, who served under El-Rufai from 2015 to 2023, vigorously defended their administration, asserting that the financial dealings during their tenure were transparent and within legal boundaries.
They challenged the current administration to provide substantive proof of wrongdoing rather than relying on what they termed as ‘fabricated figures.
The Commissioners said at a press conference in Abuja, on Tuesday, “The avalanche of figures seems only to have had the effect of mesmerising the legislators who cite one amount here, and then something different on exactly the same figure.”
According to the former public officials, the alleged siphoning of ₦423,115,028,072.88 by the Government of Kaduna State from 29th May 2015 to 29th May 2023 is a comical claim as the report does not in anywhere show where the sum of money was taken from and how it was taken and by who.
The commissioners said, “The Report does not show how they arrived at this figure, and how they decided that money had been siphoned, how it was done, from which accounts and to where. They just decreed a figure and declared it! This is the Ad-hoc Committee in action, indulging in voodoo accounting just to concoct a scandal.
“State Government’s share of revenues is put at ₦811,663,310,000 on Page 138. Yet, by the time they got to Page 168, the Committee had adopted a different figure of ₦1,497,682,993.375, without saying how and why. These contradictory figures within the same Report illustrate the lack of consistency, credibility and reliability of the so-called findings.
“The Ad-hoc Committee alleges that a State Government “siphoned” more than half of the ₦811.6bn it got as revenues over eight years, but it cannot even decide on the precise amount of these total revenues.”
In all, the commissioners dismissed the Uba Sani report as a joke taken too far and vilified him for trying desperately to impugn Governor el-Rufai and his team despite the fact that the only projects and programmes the current governor is showcasing his achievements derived primarily from the loans the former administration put in place.
The commissioners also condemned Governor Uba Sani for using his focal blood brother in writing the report against el-Rufai and his administration, saying that it was unethical to do so under any guise.
They also expressed surprise over the loud silence of the so-called report on those who cornered the CBN-sponsored Anchor Borrowers Scheme under the current administration in Kaduna and would want the government to delve into it to unravel the silent beneficiaries and how they applied the fund.
“There is a loud silence in the Report about the CBN Anchor Borrowers Programme in which Kaduna State was perhaps the State with the largest quantum of borrowing. Who are the beneficiaries? Why is the House of Assembly neither interested in nor curious about it? When Ibrahim Husaini, a former Commissioner of Agriculture, testified on 7th May 2024, he was questioned about the Anchor Borrowers Programme, and he submitted an affidavit to the House of Assembly. Curiously, his name does not appear on the list of witnesses and his testimony is omitted in the Report. Did his testimony contain certain inconvenient facts that the Ad-hoc Committee chose to steer clear of?”
The former commissioners also accused the authors of the report of having a conflict of interests and being unfit to preside over the sessions that purportedly indicted them, citing the Speaker and others are examples.
The commissioners mentioned the Speaker of the Kaduna State House of Assembly as one of those who was investigated by the Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service (KADIRS) and whose personal accounts were frozen for having billions in untaxed and unexplained income. He was also said to be involved in a public-private partnership with Kaduna Markets to develop a Neighbourhood Centre over which he has had differences with the management of Kaduna Markets.
They said, “Despite these obvious conflicts he presided at the House of Assembly session that adopted the Ad-hoc Committee’s recommendation that the former chairman of KADIRS and the former Managing Director of Kaduna Markets be referred for further investigation.”
The el-Rufai’s men also cited Barr. Mahmud Lawal Isma’ila, a member of the Ad-hoc Committee (listed as Number 5 on Pg. 3 of the Report) has proved to be very vocal in condemning Governor Nasir El-Rufai as a biological brother of Governor Uba Sani, saying that he is unqualified to pass judgment on them.
“We have once again drawn attention to the glaring evidence of the hatchet job that passes for the Report and the Ad-hoc Committee. It oozes malice and patent unfairness and raises the question why a House of Assembly that arranged extensive media coverage of its adoption of the Report has refused to provide certified true copies of the same Report more than a month after. It cannot be a reasonable assumption on their part that we will meekly accept this breach of fundamental rights or cower in the face of this premeditated assault on our reputations,” the former commissioners stated.
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