N2bn Bribery Scandal: Agric Minister Distances Self
Chief Audu Ogbeh, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development[/caption]
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has rubbished reports linking him and the Minister of State, Sen. Heineken Lokpobiri with a N2 billion Fertiliser scandal by the Nigerian Agro dealers.
Ogbeh, who said this on Thursday at a media briefing, while reacting to an online report, noted that the funds were never dispensed by the Ministry of Agriculture but rather the Ministry of Finance.
According to him, nobody in the Ministry of Agriculture collected a kobo from the contractors who were paid their money.
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Recall, that a report by an online medium alleged that Ogbeh, Lokpobiri and the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture shared the sum of N2 billion out of the total sum released for the payments of agro dealers by the federal government.
Under the last administration, agro-dealers were owed when the Growth Enhancement Support, GES, scheme was operational, which in turn led to a review of the scheme by the current administration in order to ascertain the real debt owed and cut cost.
Responding to the allegations, Ogbeh said “We read on the social media that there have been a bribery scandal in this ministry, and that in paying the agro-dealers we paid out N13 billion and the Minister of State and I shared N2 billion.
“If this is some kind of joke, it is a scurrilous joke.
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“First, this was a debt which we inherited from the previous administration, the total debt was N37 billion and when we arrived, the agro-dealers said they couldn’t operate because they didn’t have enough money to carry out their business.”
