4th August, 2015
Ayorinde Oluokun/Abuja
Dr. Paul Orhii, the Director General of National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC became the latest top government official to be interrogated by the increasingly seeming reinvigorated Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC on Monday.
He was interrogated by operatives of EFCC for over nine hours for allegedly awarding contracts worth millions of naira to himself using different fronts.
The NAFDAC DG was granted administrative bail and will report to the office of the anti-graft agency on Tuesday for the continuation of the investigation.
Dr. Orhii, a cousin of controversial former Nigeria Attorney General, Michael Aondoakaa was appointed in equally controversial circumstances as the boss of NAFDAC in 2009.
The former Attorney General who served under the late President Umaru Yar’Adua was believed to be the main facilitator of the appointment which was renewed for another four years in 2013.
Though some controversies have trailed his six years service in NAFDAC, the alleged infractions seemed to have not been strong enough to attract the attention of anti graft corruption bodies or the agencies just choose to look away like it did with many of such under the immediate past administration.
Orhii questioning by operatives of EFCC on Monday followed a petition sent to President Muhammadu Buhari and the anti graft agency in which the NAFDAC boss was alleged to have been involved in various fraudulent activities like frivolous contract awards and supplies, manipulated publicity efforts, donations, international air travel racketeering, extortion, compulsory recertification by bottle and sachet water producers.
The complaint lists 14 companies that are being used in the money games at NAFDAC. In the petition tagged: MONUMENTAL FRAUDS AND WASTE OF TAX PAYERS MONEY BY DR. PAUL B. ORHII, DG NAFDAC, the petitioner listed 14 companies which they alleged to be the front through which the boss of NAFDAC has perpetrated the allegations contained in the petition.
“We bring to your notice the monumental frauds and corruption unprecedented being perpetrated by DG, NAFDAC, and his agents to enrich himself and his aides,” the petitioner said in their introduction to the various infractions they listed against Orhii.
Some of the allegations of corruption listed against the NAFDAC DG include inflation of the contract for supply and installation of furniture to NAFDAC, Isolo Lagos awarded to a company referred to as Cherrywood by about N190 million, illegal withdrawal of the sum of N400m, appropriation of landed property of NAFDAC in Benue State, unlawful use of consultants for collection of money, extortion of producers of sachet and bottled waters and spending of N4 billion for “fictitious” publicity in a space of three years.
The petitioners, among others also accused the NAFDAC DG of spending N100 on fictitious trips while noting that when Orhii took over in January, 2009 he inherited over N600m in the account of the agency when the internally generated revenue of NAFDAC was about N3.5b yearly.
But the petitioners noted that now though the annual internally revenue of NAFDAC has been N9 billion for the past four years, the agency’s current level of indebtedness is about N5 billion, a situation they described as an instance of mismanagement of funds by Orhii.
The management of NAFDAC had accused the former finance director of the agency, Mr. Ademola Mogbojuri of being behind the petition when it was first published. Indeed, the local chapter of the Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria (MHWUN) of the agency addressed a press conference during which they also accused Mogbojuri of gross misconduct and financial impropriety.
But while denying that he authored the petition, Mogbojuri agreed that he indeed have proofs to show that Orhii has been reckless with funds belonging to the agency. Mogbojuri, who has since been moved to the NAFDAC Training Institute in Kaduna, said he was being victimised for refusing to be a part of the massive corruption going on in the agency.
Orhii, he alleged, was the leader of the corrupt gang. “The truth of the matter is that the DG is quite reckless with spending. Before he joined the agency in 2009, the annual total revenue of NAFDAC was about N2.5 billion and he met around N600 million in the account. Now, the total internally generated revenue is about N9 billion and the agency owes about N5 billion in debt,” said Mogbojuri.
“Every month, I wrote about the financial position of the agency to the DG and supported it with relevant documents. Part of what we owe are government remittances which are about N1.4billion but he never allowed me to pay because he was scooping the money. Some of the companies they use to carry out the deals have collected over N6billion in the last two years. Towards the general election this year, he collected a lot of money and used it to buy vehicles, which he branded and gave to a governorship aspirant in his native Benue State. The financial recklessness of the DG has brought NAFDAC onto its knees,” said the former finance director of NAFDAC.
He added that Orhii had been engaged in massive transfer of people out of the finance department to cover up his tracks, just as he has also transferred him to Kaduna.
He added that the NAFDAC DG replaced him with a Statistician. But NAFDAC, in a statement issued on Monday night said Orhii went to EFCC on his own volition. “The visit was at the personal volition of the DG to explain the situation regarding allegation of corruption by a former Director of Finance and Accounts of the Agency, Mr.Ademola Mogbojuri,” Abubakar Jimoh, NAFDAC Director of Special Duties said in a statement.
He added that other officers of the Agency mentioned in the petition have also been visiting EFCC.
“There’s nothing unusual about this but rather to applaud the DG for his courage to want to engage the recalcitrant director, who has decided to dance naked in the public and become a willing tool in the hands of the counterfeiters to infiltrate our organised system,” said Jimoh.
Beyond the workers’ solidarity with their boss, Nigerians will be interested in what the EFCC will discover from its interrogation of Orhii after the conclusion of his interrogation.