A ‘major scam’ involving diversion of funds by the immediate past administration of Kwara State government, has been exposed by the new government, Igbere TV reports.
The ‘scam’ led to the blacklisting of the state by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).
Igbere TV reports that the then state government had mismanaged 1.5 billion naira grant meant to upgrade schools in the state in 2013.
This was further revealed on Thursday during an unscheduled visit of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq to the UBEC headquarters in Abuja.
UBEC officials told the governor that the sum of N1.5bn was allotted to Kwara in 2013 with a request for the state to pay another N1.5bn as counterpart funding.
The officials said the government was later discovered to have borrowed the N1.5bn from a bank with which it immediately accessed the UBEC fund.
“Upon receipt of the UBEC’s N1.5bn, Kwara government returned the N1.5bn it had borrowed from the bank and then diverted the UBEC’s N1.5bn without investing it in educational infrastructure as required by law”, a top UBEC official told our correspondent.
“This led to UBEC blacklisting Kwara and demanding for immediate refund of its N1.5bn.”
Findings by Igbere TV showed that the then state government later returned N1.050bn leaving an outstanding N450 million which the Abdulfatai Ahmed’s administration never paid to UBEC.
The new governor, AbdulRazaq was told that UBEC will only do business with Kwara when the outstanding N450m is refunded to UBEC by Kwara government.
Igbere TV reports that the Kwara delegation led by AbdulRazaq promised to pay the N450m to enable the state access funds to develop its schools.
Further investigation by Igbere TV revealed that Kwara has not accessed UBEC funds since 2013, following the blacklist.
Exclusive documents obtained by Igbere TV from UBEC’s headquarters showed that the commission has at least N5.6 billion available for Kwara which can only be accessed if and when the state pays the outstanding debt of N450m.
Igbere TV reports that AbdulRazaq’s visit to UBEC comes barely 48 hours after he visited decrepit schools in the Northern Senatorial District of Kwara where most of the schools’ roofs had collapsed.
He had promised to look into the devastating state of the infrastructure across the state especially in schools, hospitals and road networks.
Here are some of the exclusive documents obtained by Igbere TV…
