The controversial purchase of a yacht for the president’s office through the Nigerian Navy has taken a fresh dimension as the Network for the Actualization of Social Growth and Viable Development (NEFGAD) is demanding an investigation into the process that led to it procurement.
NEFGAD, a procurement advocacy group, in a statement sent to THE WHISTLER and signed by its president, Akingunola Omoniyi, accused the Navy of using reverse-procurement to fund purchase of the N5bn yacht.
NEFGAD explained that the reverse-procurement adopted by the Navy is a situation whereby public goods and works are fully delivered without cash backing.
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According to the group, the style adopted by the Navy where items in a supplementary budget are executed and delivered is a dire procurement anomaly which goes against the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
The group argued that ‘’the entire allocutus of a long overdue request” made by the Nigerian Navy has no place in the Budget/Public Procurement regulations/ICPC Act.
NEFGAD called on the “Independent Corrupt practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to conduct thorough investigation into the entire yacht procurement process and bring to book any erring individuals while calling for watertight regulations of the Defence/Security sector procurement without compromising internal security measures.
“Without prejudice to subsection 15(2) of the Public Procurement Act, public procurement must be done with utmost responsibility, decency and prudence, a situation whereby procurement processes are concluded with goods delivered to entities without cash backing and or percentage financial mobilization shows something is fundamentally wrong with the procurement proceeding or some people are trying to outsmart the system,” the group said.
NEFGAD said that the exception enjoyed by the Security/Defence sector under the Public Procurement Act does not “confer any act of fiscal/procurement recklessness on any entity and individual as section 22(4) of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) Act has no exception as per scope of application over award of contract without Cash backing.”
THE WHITSLER had reported that the House of Representatives removed the controversial N5bn presidential yacht from the 2023 supplementary budget.
The Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Abubakar Bichi, from Kano State said the committee removed the item and moved the money to the student loan section to make it N10bn.
In the heat of the controversy, the Presidency, in a statement by Temitope Ajayi, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, denied asking for a presidential yacht and that the Nigerian Navy made the request.