The audit of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) accounts and transactions could not be done in the past ten years because certain individuals frustrated the process, a top official has said.
It was also revealed that the secretariat gave improper briefs to the current NGF chairman and Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq on the assumption of office based on instructions from some former leaders of the forum to cover their tracks.
According to a viral letter authored by the NGF Director of Media and Public Affairs, AbdulRazaque Bello- Barkindo which was addressed to the chairman and Kwara Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, he said certain individuals have turned the Forum into cash cow for private endeavours.
“NGF is conduit pipe for a few individuals,” said Barkindo.
Barkindo added that the NGF accounts had not been audited for 10 years or more, as the forum does not have an accountant.
He demanded a forensic audit of all the NGF accounts including those that were opened during crises periods to avoid “prying eyes of governors in the name of NIGOFO among others.”
The letter reads In part, “The secretariat’s accounts have not been audited in the last decade to say the least, that even the phony auditors invited to mock the auditing process have at various times confessed that the job they are doing for the secretariat is a wash.
“Has anyone ever wondered why an institution that midwife’s huge monetary deals like the Paris-London refunds does not have a qualified accountant? In an organisation that makes over three billion Naira annually, the total annual income of its entire staff is seventy million naira. Staff of the Forum are always asking where all the money goes. There is a staff that earns N20,000 a month ($20.)
“There are instances. The N630m deductions from the N5bn infrastructure support fund which ended in a shouting bout among governors while you are chairman was a deliberate ploy to make you look bad among your colleagues.
“The secretariat did not brief you adequately. Their instructions from their master’s house, across the street, was to set booby traps and obstacles in your path. I am a witness. On the Paris-London Club transaction which the NGF midwifed, the NGF made close to N19bn out of which the staff of the NGF were to be rewarded with N850m by the Chairman of the Forum, at the time Governor Abdulaziz Yari Abubakar of Zamfara State.”
Barkindo asked the NGF chairman and Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq to take bold steps to reform the forum.
