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Nigeria: 50 Billion Naira Rice Scam - AGF, Minister Disagree Over Allocation
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Daily Champion (Lagos)
23 July 2008
Posted to the web 23 July 2008
Lagos
Senate investigation into the groaning food crisis took a curious dimension yesterday as the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) Mr Ibrahim Dankwambo, the Director General of Budget Mr Bright Okogu and the Ministry of Agriculture and Water and Resources failed to agree on the actual budgetary releases to the ministry in the last nine years .
But Okogu told the Senate ad-hoc committee probing the food crisis how the ministry officials diverted over N50 billion revenue from the rice and sugar levy into the procurement of fertilizers using some of their cronies.
He told the stunned committee that his office had on many occasions refused the said officials access to the fund only for them to secure executive fiat compelling his office to release part of the fund for purposes other than development of sugar and rice production in the country
The committee in its preliminary verdict yesterday described the action of the said official as unconstitutional insisting that such practice would have contributed to the wide spread hunger in the land
Trouble however started yesterday when the AGF , the Director General of Budget and the Ministry of Agriculture differed on the total amount of money released to the sector in the last nine years
While the AGF put the total release to the sector at N585.4billion., the Director General of Budget office put the figure at N611.6billion
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But the ministry in an earlier submission said that it received the sum of N368.8billion as capital vote only and not N289 billion as claimed
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