Sir: The roof of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development was removed to reveal the rottenness of the inner workings of the establishment.

Of course, that is what the ministry was meant to be: a rotten egg. The man who created the ministry, former President Muhammadu Buhari, did not create it because Nigeria needed an additional ministry. Far be it. Though he said during its creation that the mission of the ministry was to develop humanitarian policies and provide effective coordination of national and international humanitarian interventions, everyone knew those were mere semantics.

Yes, we all knew it was an empty talk. Just like everything, this ministry was established for the primary purpose of spreading the national cake to Buhari’s forebears. So he appointed the beautiful Dr. Sadiya Umar Farouk, a young lady as minister to head the ministry. Umar-Farouk was the youngest minister in Buhari’s cabinet. During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, she was the one who infamously claimed that she spent over N500 million to feed school pupils! In their dreams, perhaps! Today, as we speak, the ex-minister is holding court with the EFCC in connection with money laundering amounting to more than N30 billion involving herself and some agencies under her ministry.

Now enters Dr. Betta Edu, President Bola Tinubu’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development.

Like her predecessor, Edu is the youngest minister in Tinubu’s government, just as Umar-Farouk was the youngest in Buhari’s government.  The striking similarities did not end there. Edu is just as beautiful as  Umar-Farouk. And they both bear the enviable title “Dr.” before their names.

Edu must have been a good student of  Umar-Farouk. She seemed to know her onion so well as well as her mission in the ministry. Her mistake, however, was that she was in too much of a hurry. No one is saying it is out of place for those who wait upon the altar to live on the things of the altar. But the young minister went beyond her brief and began to cannibalise the altar itself.

Now this was what happened in her Ministry, at least the little they have allowed us to know:

On one hand was Hajiya Halima Shehu, head of the National Social Investment Programmes Agency, NSIPA. On the other hand was Edu. NSIPA is one of the agencies under Edu’s ministry. Right from the word go, there has been no love lost between Shehu and Edu, the minister. You know women na!

Anyway, it so happened early this month that Shehu was suspended as the chief executive officer of NSIPA for allegedly diverting over N40 billion from the coffers of her agency.

The moment Shehu was suspended, a memo surfaced in the media where Edu had asked Oluwatoyin Madein, accountant-general of the federation, to transfer N585 million to a private account. The noise that followed this disclosure was so deafening that Tinubu was forced to issue a letter of suspension to Edu.

While being interrogated by the EFCC, Shehu spilled the beans. She told the Economic and Financial Crime Commission that the money she was said to have diverted to private accounts was the funds she officially moved to three government’s accounts in order to prevent the minister from looting the money! The minister, according to her, and without following the due process, has almost turned the account of her agency red as she continued to draw on the account without informing her!

There were other scandals involving the minister that were revealed! One of them was a leaked approval of N3.16 million by the minister for flight tickets and airport taxis for herself and 14 officials, including a security officer of her ministry who went from Abuja to Kogi State for an official assignment, when indeed Kogi State has no airport! The memo showed that the minister herself received the sum of N300,000 for her flight ticket to the same state that has no airport. What she got for her airport taxi was not disclosed in the memo.

The wind, indeed, is blowing. How it will end no one knows. One thing is clear, corruption is colour-blind, and it  knows no gender or age.

Sly Edaghese wrote from Milwaukee, Wi, USA.