$200m Consultancy Fees: Reps Threaten Malami, Finance Minister With Arrest

Abubakar Malami, the federation’s attorney general and minister of justice, has been invited by the House of Representatives once more in response to claims that he authorized the payment of $200 million to two private companies for consulting services related to whistleblower recoveries.

Without offering specifics regarding actual recovery from whistleblowers, the House also invited the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed Shamsuna, to discuss her part in the aforementioned approvals and payments.

Through its special committee looking into the sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil worth more than $2.4 billion and the shipment of crude oil to other countries since 2014, the House of Representatives issued the threat.

At the investigation’s resumed hearing, the committee’s chairman, Hon. Mark Gbillah, lamented that despite several invitations, both ministers had refused to cooperate with the panel.

“Despite numerous correspondences made to the Ministry of Finance and Attorney General’s office outlining the subjects we are looking into, we have not received any assistance from them regarding this investigation. We’ve seen records from the Accountant General’s office showing that the Minister of Finance authorized the payment of a sizeable sum of money to purported whistleblowers even though specifics about the money seized weren’t given.

The federal government has reportedly told the media that whistleblower revelations on behalf of the nation led to the recovery of millions of dollars. But before they were spent, the parliament was not made aware of the constitutional appropriation mechanism used to move those funds. The constitution is extremely explicit about how money from Nigeria is received and spent, he claimed.

Gbilah claims that the committee is specifically curious about the source of the Attorney General’s authority to authorise payments of cash intended for the federation without first going to the legislature through an official request by the administration.

We have examined the duties of the Attorney General’s office, but we have not found any statutory authority granted to the Attorney General by the constitution to decide how Nigeria’s funds should be spent.

“There was a case involving a whistle blower who formally reported to the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) about $200 million paid into the accounts of two companies, Biz Plus and GSCL, allegedly for consulting services. According to the report, the Attorney General’s office approved the alleged payment with the approval of Mr. President.

We need the Attorney General of the Federation and the Honorable Minister of Finance to appear before this House to clarify the inflows from whistleblower recoveries and about these funds that were recovered. The CBN is also required to provide information that has been provided by these whistleblowers about significant sums of money that were paid ostensibly and purportedly for consultancy services even though there is no record of any agreement to that effect.

The Attorney General of the Federation, the Honorable Minister of Finance, and everyone else who has not responded or honored the Committee’s invitations are being urged to do so in the interest of the country. If they refuse, we will be forced to use the instrument of summons and any other relevant powers the National Assembly may have.

The committee added, “But we want to make this a formal and final notice to those concerned, the Honorable Minister of Finance and the Attorney General of the Federation to cause appearance before the committee to give evidence with regard to the allegations that have been laid with regard to the questions the committee has requested for them to answer and to respond to.”