The firm awarded the contract for the audit of the Oil and Gas sector by the Federal Government, Sada Idris & Co., has no office, contrary to its claim, The Eagle Online Investigation has revealed.
Sada Idris & Co was awarded the contract worth N226.613m by the Federal Government for an independent audit of payments in the country’s oil and gas industry.
But checks by The Eagle Online revealed that the company has no office in Lagos as it claimed on its website, which was hurriedly pulled down two days ago after the media pointed out numerous grammatical and spelling blunders.
The company gave its address in Lagos as 42, Adeniran Ogunsanya Street, Surulere, Lagos.
But no such company exists in the building.
Rather, the companies operating their businesses from the building are Prime Clothing, a shop for clothes, shoes and bags; Karox, a computer education and training firm; Alvi salon and Spa; and Polyclean, a laundry shop, which is at the back building.
The Eagle Online went further to also find out if the company has an office at 46, Adeniran Ogunsanya Street, which was where a search on Google put the office location as.
But this building also does not house Sada Idris and Co.
Rather, at the building which houses Ladel, a baby shop, a security man told our correspondent that “some people who were accountants were inside this shop (a small space at the back of the building, with iron door that looks like a gate) before.
“They left here more than six months ago.”
The shop is locked.
On enquiry about where the accountants moved to, another source who works in the building said she sees one Aisha, who was a part of the company that was using the shop before it was vacated, “somewhere around Tafawa Balewa Crescent. I think it is number 10.”
Tafawa Balewa Crescent is off Adeniran Ogunsanya Street.
A visit to 10, Tafawa Balewa Crescent revealed a house which compound looks largely unkempt from outside.
But inside is a small signage of Haruna Yayaha & Co., the firm that was awarded the contract for the auditing of the solid minerals sector.
The firm got the job for N137 million.
On enquiry about Sada & Co., a lady who spoke with our correspondent at the reception said she does not know the company.
She said Haruna Yayaha was the sole occupant of the building.
This has raised further questions about the award of the jobs for the auditing of the oil and gas and the solid mineral sectors to these firms.
The Eagle Online had reported on Sunday that a high level fraud is suspected in the award of these contracts.
Attention became focused on Sada & Co. because of the content of its website.
There were high level grammatical and spelling errors on the site.
And once this was pointed out in the media, the website was pulled down on Saturday.
Part of the story published by The Eagle online on Sunday reads:
“While briefing journalists at the end of its weekly Federal Executive Council chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan, the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, said the firms have nine months to turn in their findings.
Some other reports showed that since Nigeria is part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Nigerian arm, NEITI, was credited with the authorship of the report.
NEITI is supposed to aim at increasing transparency in payments to governments from the natural resources industry.
When Maku was speaking, he noted that the appointment of consultants will establish processes and procedures; physical volumes and financial flows from the sectors; improve revenue remittances into the Federal Government account and enthrone competition and corporate governance.
But this is not a deep rooted audit task.
The scope of work the minister described is primarily forensic audit or at best process audit.
Another fault in the minister’s position is in the assertion in some other newspaper reports that the choice of the two audit firms were done in line with the Procurement Act.
This may not be too true.
If the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dizeani Allison-Madueke, set up her committee on January 16, 2012, then when and how did NEITI enter into the processes and sent same to the Federal Executive Council?
A scan through the Tenders Journal, both the hard copy and the online version, did not show NEITI’s advertisement for the job to have been tendered.
So, when was this job advertised leading to the choice of the two firms announced?
There was a KPMG audit report that lied on the ledgers of the Petroleum minister for more than a year.
KPMG was paid.
Is KPMG not competent to be re-briefed for this new audit?
What is wrong in making KPMG complete what they have started?
Are there some issues to be hidden based on the fact that the KPMG report indicted its paymaster, leading to the appointment of a lesser qualified firm for the new audit?
What ‘big’ job has the new auditors handled before?
Given the quality of errors they have on their websites, which were hurriedly pulled down, another search took The Eagle Online to their Facebook page where it is written: “Haruna Yahaya & Co Chartered Accountant and Tax Practitional” instead of practitioners. It is also a company of Chartered Accountant and not Accountants!
The introduction to one of the company’s websites said: “Sada Idris & Co chattered Accountants is one of the leading medium sized professional Chartered Accountants and Tax Consulting Firm providing first class services.”
So, by the size of the firm, medium sized, by their own admittance, this must be the biggest ever job they are getting.
By deduction, it means the company has never done this kind of jobs before.
So, the conclusion is: it must be a job for the boys.
He said the consultants are to carry out Nigeria’s hydrocarbon and solid mineral values; adding: “They shall access the volumetric aspects of production, export, imports, unaccounted oil and gas and solid minerals and other relevant streams.”
This definitely will overwhelm the firms.
So what does the nation expect?
It would be recalled that President Goodluck Jonathan said last week that he would tackle corruption in the oil and gas industry and prosecute offenders as a week-long strike against a government decision to scrap subsidies on gasoline came to an end.
Allison-Madueke on January promised to end corruption and speed up reforms of the country’s oil industry.
She, with the approval of Jonathan, ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to the disbursement of N1.3 Trillion as petroleum product subsidy.
The last audit of the oil industry was carried out between 2006 and 2008.”
So the question then becomes pertinent: Who are the brains behind Sada and Co.?
The Eagle Online will provide the answer in a few days.
But in a matter of hours, the photographs of the buildings Sada Idris & Co. claim to be operating from will be on this site.
So also will the photograph of 10, Tafawa Balewa Crescent, where Haruna Yayah & Co. operates from be made available on this site.