The trial of former Kwara State Governor, Mallam AbdulFatah Ahmed, and his finance commissioner for the alleged diversion of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) N5.78 billion matching grants continued yesterday, with the Ilorin zonal Directorate of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) serving as the prosecutor.
However, the embattled former governor and his aide pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The commission had dragged the duo before the state High Court for the alleged misappropriation of the UBEC matching grants of N5.78 billion between 2013 and 2019.
At the resumed hearing of the case on Tuesday, the anti-graft commission’s witness, Abubakar Hassan, informed the court that neither Ahmed nor Banu was a signatory to the Kwara State Universal Basic Education Board (KWSUBEB) account.
During cross-examination, the counsel for the former governor and ex-commissioner, Kamaldeen Ajibade (SAN) and Gboyega Oyewole (SAN), questioned the witness.
The witness, Assistant Director of Finance at UBEC, stated that SUBEB is an autonomous agency with a separate board headed by an executive chairperson.
“State SUBEBs have distinct and separate accounts from state governments’. The governor is not allowed to be a member of the SUBEB board, nor was he a signatory to the account. UBEC usually pays matching grants directly to state SUBEB accounts,” he added.
Hassan further stated that UBEC receives an education action plan from states and approves the same for the board.
“SUBEB is an independent agency under the UBEC Act. SUBEB payments are not for the state government.
“It is the duty of SUBEB to receive grants and disburse them on its own according to the law,” he explained.
He also revealed that through a letter to SUBEB’s banks, the board eventually retrieved over N1.8 billion meant for 2013 and 2014, which had been illegally withdrawn due to the board’s refusal to pay its counterpart funds.
Earlier on Monday, Hassan, while being led in evidence by EFCC counsel Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), testified that 51 projects approved in 2013 were abandoned due to a lack of funds.
Hassan said the UBEC project monitoring committee discovered that, despite approval for these projects, the state government mismanaged the funds.
“The project monitoring exercise conducted investigations and found that many projects were either unexecuted or abandoned. We wrote to the then-Kwara State Governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, in May 2018 to address these issues, but we received no response,” Hassan recalled.
He explained that the projects spanned all 16 local governments of the state.
According to Hassan, on January 6, 2015, N1 billion was loaned from the 2013 UBEC matching grant account with Skye Bank Plc to pay staff salaries and pensions.
Addressing the utilization of the 2014 and 2015 state counterpart funds, he said that Kwara SUBEB had illegally withdrawn N1,829,054,054.06 from funds lodged on February 18, 2016.
“These funds had qualified the state to access the Federal Government’s UBEC matching grants,” he stressed.
He further testified that UBEC had sent a letter of invitation requesting documentary evidence regarding the Kwara State Government’s use of its grants.
“We submitted documents showing the lodgment of funds to Kwara SUBEB. The projects were categorized into three: early care education, primary school education, and junior secondary school education,” he explained.
He also reiterated that UBEC wrote to the first defendant (Abdulfatah Ahmed) in May 2018, drawing attention to the alleged mismanagement of education funds, saying: “There was no response from the state government.”
“State matching grants are not permitted to be borrowed or utilized for any purpose outside the approved action plan. The objectives of UBEC were undermined due to these infractions and the failure to implement the action plan,” Hassan stated.
Justice Mahmud thereafter adjourned the case to March 12 and 13 for continuation.
