LG chairmen defraud pilgrims

The Commission of Inquiry set up by the Niger State Government to investigate alleged illegal dealings in two local government areas has lamented that the hajj deposits by intending pilgrims were diverted to private use by local government chairmen and their councillors of Borgu and Rafi Local Government Areas.
Submitting the report of the Commission to the state’s acting Governor, Alhaji Ahmed Musa Ibeto, at the Government House on Wednesday, the Chairman of the Commission of inquiry, Justice Aisha Bwari, said that the situation was so pathetic because the Commission discovered that there was massive stealing of public funds and disregard of laid down rules in the two local government areas.
Bwari said the Commission also believes that similar disregard for accounting rules and procedures, which include giving of verbal directives to local government staff, are also likely to be the order of the day in the remaining 23 local government areas of the state.
According to her: “Hajj deposits by intending pilgrims were diverted to private use by the elected local government chairmen and their councillors in the two local government areas.
“What we found most touching is the issue of diversion of hajj deposits of people who have saved all their lives to perform hajj only to be frustrated, their dreams dashed because some people have diverted the savings.
“In one of the local government areas, deposits by 30 intending pilgrims were diverted, with the suspended chairman promising to refund the money, while in the second local government area, the savings by 13 intending pilgrims were diverted.”
In a bid to avoid accountability, Bwari explained that all directives by the chairmen were given verbally, adding that there was no award of contract that was documented.
She gave the example of a 40 kilometre road project, which was graded, to have cost the local government area N16 million, with only N1.3 million expended on the job and the balance of the money disappeared into thin air after it was collected from the treasury by the suspended chairman of the council.
The Commission, she said, discovered that the road which leads to the town of the local government chairman took over eight hours for the return journey as against 30 minutes if the job had been done.
She said the panel discovered that Borgu Local Government Area collected tenement rate of N8 million monthly from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria through a tax consultant from November 2012 to June 2013, making a total of N64 million but only N9 million was paid into the account of the local government.
The Commission cited another instance where the chairman of one of the local governments collected N8 million monthly from the allocation of the local government area without giving account for the money.
The Commission, Bwari said, recommended that the hajj deposits diverted should be deducted from the allocation of the local governments by the state government, while special considerations should be given to the intending pilgrims to perform the hajj this year.
Ibeto, while receiving the nine volume report, thanked the commission for a job well done and promised that all the recommendations would be studied and implemented.
He said the intending pilgrims, whose monies were diverted, will be given preference in this year’s hajj exercise.