Explain alleged N6b emergency fund scam, PDP charges Osinbajo

Seeks prosecution of sacked NEMA boss
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has urged Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to “come out clean” on the alleged N5.8 billion National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) scandal in which he was allegedly fingered by an investigative committee of the House of Representatives.

The party also charged the presidency to immediately prosecute the sacked Director General of the agency, Mustapha Yunusa Maihaja, who was also ‘indicted’ by the lower legislative chamber over alleged embezzlement of N33 billion in the organisation.

The PDP said it stands with Nigerians in rejecting “this unpardonable pat in the wrist of allowing Engineer Maihaja to leave office without investigation and prosecution to recover the allegedly embezzled fund.”

The political grouping, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said it believed that “the failure to prosecute the indicted former NEMA Director General as a ploy to shield very top officials in the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration, who are alleged to be involved in the series of scam in NEMA, while the masses, for whom the fund was meant to serve, continue to suffer neglect and untold hardships.”

It insisted that Maihaja’s sacking “should not be used as an excuse to foreclose an investigation into the alleged huge fraud in NEMA under Vice President Osinbajo as Chairman of its Governing Board.”

PDP described the alleged “sleaze in NEMA as an indelible smear on the Buhari presidency”, imploring the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to “immediately take in Engr. Maihaja for questioning, and if found wanting, he should be prosecuted.”

The main opposition party claimed that the vice president had “failed to provide cogent response to the report of the House of Representatives on the N33 billion NEMA fraud in addition to allegations that the N5.8 billion was withdrawn from the national coffers, while he was Acting President, without legislative consent and expended without recourse to extant due process, procurement and contract rules.”

It recalled that the green chamber had “exposed that while the fund was claimed to have been expended for procurement of grains under the emergency intervention on food security in the North East, none of the six states of the North East received any grains from the so-called emergency intervention by NEMA.”

According to the party, “the legislative house had also exposed that there was no evidence that the World Food Programme (WFP) received the 5000 metric tons of rice which NEMA claimed to have bought and donated to WFP for distribution to victims of insurgency in the region.”