June 14, 2010
A non-governmental organization, Peace Building and Humanitarian Initiatives, has asked a Federal High Court to compel the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to prosecute the Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Ahmed Modibbo Mohammed, for siphoning away over N15 billion belonging to UBEC and the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI).
A non-governmental organization, Peace Building and Humanitarian Initiatives, has asked a Federal High Court to compel the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to prosecute the Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Ahmed Modibbo Mohammed, for siphoning away over N15 billion belonging to UBEC and the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI).
Also joined as defendant in the suit is the Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai, a former commissioner of education in Jigawa State, who is believed to have been seriously compromised by Modibbo since she assumed office two months ago. The Minister’s personal assistant, Yakubu Abbass, and another assistant, Dr. Sagir, are on “secondment” from Modibbo.
In the suit, Number FHC/ABJ/CS/386/2010 filed on June 3, 2010, the group is seeking, among other things, “a declaration that the 1st defendant (education minister) should order a thorough investigation of the activities of the Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Ahmed Modibbo on allegations of corruption against him.”
The group is further seeking “a declaration that the second defendant (EFCC) commences investigation against Dr. Ahmed Modibbo with a view to making corruption charges against him” and another “declaration that it is in line with the spirit of the current war against corruption by the present government in Nigeria to sanitize the system, that adequate investigation be carried out against Dr. Modibbo.”
The NGO is also seeking “a declaration that it would amount to injustice against millions of helpless Nigerian children who are meant to be direct beneficiaries of the UBEC scheme if proper investigation is not carried out against the corrupt activities of Dr. Modibbo.”
In a 15-paragraph statement of claim by U.M. Ibekwe of King’s chambers, the lawyer stated: “The first defendant is the public officer charged by the Federal Government of Nigeria to promote, supervise and ensure the proper implementation of government educational policies and programmes in the country from the primary, secondary to the tertiary levels.
“The plaintiff avers that it is in recognition of its abiding duty to assist government to fight corruption that it brings this suit as a whistle blower to point to the corrupt activities of the Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Ahmed Modibbo.
“That the company profile found in CAC revealed that Dr. Ahmed Modibbo’s wife is the owner of such companies as Binani Nigeria Ltd., Binwa Press Limited, Triangular Communications Ltd, Golden Crescent Nigeria Ltd, Infinity Telecoms Ltd, and Quest Ventures that are major contractors with UBEC.
“In a well chronicled investigation carried out by Saharareporters published recently on the Internet, it was revealed that Dr. Modibbo has defrauded UBEC of over N7 billion Naira through fraudulent contracts aided and abetted by some members of the cabal in the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s government.
“That various comments that accompanied the publication of Modibbo’s corrupt activities by Sahararerporters throw a strong challenge on the government to fully demonstrate its willingness to fight corruption and bring sanity to our society even if the heavens fall,” the lawyer claimed.
Checks by Saharareporters however revealed that the move by Peace Building and Humanitarian Initiatives to have EFCC prosecute Modibbo may prove to be an uphill task, as the UBEC boss has employed the services of another NGO Nigeria Development Initiative (NDI), to frustrate the suit.
In a most incredulous but symbolic move, Modibbo has invited the heavily compromised EFCC chairperson, Mrs. Farida Waziri, her colleague in the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), as well as the chairman, Code of Conduct Bureau, Mr. Sam Asaba, to a “National Anti-corruption Forum” billed to hold on Wednesday 16th June, 2010 at the Abuja Sheraton Hotels and Towers.
Shortly after we ran stories on how Modibbo and his wife siphon UBEC, NTI and MDG billions, a UBEC source disclosed, “Modibbo quickly assembled a battery of consultants who advised that the best way to confront the issues, apart from the millions they doled out to Nigerian journalists, was to organize an anti-corruption forum and have the heads of EFCC, ICPC and Code of Conduct Bureau, attend.”
According to the source, “the consultants had argued that hosting the chairpersons of the relevant anti-graft agencies to a National anti-Corruption Forum would tremendously boost Modibbo’s image and water down whatever has been said or written about his activities in NTI and UBEC.”
“I know Waziri will attend the forum because Modibbo constantly ‘settles’ her. What I am not sure is if the revered Justice Ayoola and the venerable Asaba would bring themselves to attend such a charade, because they ought to have arraigned Modibbo for corruption and breaching the code of conduct for public officers. But for sabotage on the part of Ayoola’s lieutenant, Dr. Uriah Angulu, Modibbo’s Man Friday and former colleague in ABU, Zaria, the commission would have at least made some feeble attempts to investigate the UBEC boss. Can Waziri, Ayoola or Asaba swear they have not read of the allegations against Modibbo?” he asked.
Continuing, our source said, “Nothing could be more ludicrous. Imagine the Inspector-General of Police attending a function organized by the late notorious armed robber, Lawrence Anini, or the NDLEA boss attending a seminar organized by a drug baron? The Code of Conduct Bureau prosecuted former FCT minister Nasir el-Rufai for awarding a plot of land to his wife. The case at hand is Modibbo, who keeps abusing his office by awarding all UBEC contracts to only to companies owned by his wife, Aishatu,” the official reasoned, adding, “well, let us see if they would prove us wrong on Wednesday by not attending that corruption summit.”
Sources close to Modibbo’s wife Aishatu told Saharareporters that the couple have been thoroughly discomfited by our reports, and have made desperate attempts to reach out to those “who would have to seal their fate,” beginning with Nigerians journalists. Working through the Abuja editor of a newspaper owned by former Governor Bola Tinubu, all the bureau chiefs of media houses were ‘invited’ to hear Modibbo’s side of the story.”
At the end of the meeting, a source who witnessed the charade offered, “we were offered handsome amounts to ‘fuel our cars’’ and urged to discountenance what he claimed was a smear campaign launched by his suspended deputy in UBEC, Prof. Bridget Sokan and some publishers he claimed lost out of the printing contracts.
Said the source, “We ran away with the conclusion that Modibbo was guilty as charged, because he could not respond to any of the probing questions on his alleged siphoning of UBEC funds, particularly those from an editor of Peoples Daily,” adding, “we took the money or bribe because some of us felt justified that it was, after all, the stolen money meant for our children’s education that Modibbo was simply handing back.”
Family sources also hinted that Modibbo has moved his roguery a notch further by engaging the image-laundering services of Daily Trust, a sectional newspaper notorious for securing a retainership from the Late President Umaru Yar’Adu’s widow Turai, to run false and misleading stories of a fast recuperating Yar’Adua strolling on the grounds of Aso Presidential Villa, admiring the tweeting birds in the company of his many grandchildren.
Penultimate Sunday, Daily Trust ran a front page story of the Senate and the Minister handing Modibbo a clean bill of health after exhaustively investigating all the “allegations” leveled against him in our previous reports. Modibbo, according to the Daily Trust report, had satisfactorily responded to a query by his supervising minister, explaining that none of his wife’s companies benefited from the contracts to supply books.
The report was silent on whether or not Modibbo explained what nature of contract the website of his wife’s Binani Group proudly announces as “ongoing” in UBEC. Equally silent in the report was whether Modibbo explained how his wife’s companies, including those that were unregistered, were, in the first place, shortlisted by the Ministerial Tenders’ Board.
A top ministry official said he didn’t see the so-called query but that it ended up raising more questions. Among them, in his words:
• Is it that the honourable minister in the query didn’t or forgot to ask Modibbo how his wife’s company, Binani, pocketed N333 million as consultancy fees for the Federal Teachers’ Scheme (FTS) which he supervised, or got N110 million each year for three years for the phantom biometrics exercise for the MDG programmes?
• “I wonder if the minister asked Modibbo how two of his wife’s companies, Binwa Press Ltd and Ojunwa Press Ltd which were incorporated on 7th and 8th May 2009 respectively, could have been announced as two of the firms pre-qualified by UBEC in an advertorial Modibbo signed and was published six months earlier in the Thisday and Daily Trust newspapers of November 5, 2008?
• “One also wonders if the minister asked Modibbo to explain if it was by sheer coincidence that all the six of the companies, including Binwa Press Ltd, which hadn’t been registered at the time, that purportedly won the 29th December, 2008, contract worth N186 million to supply instructional materials for physically-challenged children belong to his wife?
• “And did the minister ask how her Tenders’ Board came about Al-Mala Ventures and Ginyike Ventures that have been confirmed by the CAC to be non-existent?
• “The minister would also have done a good job in asking her partner-in-crime how he could have awarded an NTI printing contract to Ojunwa Press Ltd in August 1997, when CAC records reveal that the same company was incorporated in May 2009?”
Commenting further, he said, “Since Saharareporters broke the scandal, they have been running from pillar to post, not knowing how to handle the matter. Apparently, they have been in touch with their godfathers in the offices of the SSS, SGF, MDG, and, of course, the Bureau for Public Procurement. We have since come to realize that the syndicate is larger than we imagined. Modibbo has been blackmailing them that he won’t go down alone, that he would make full disclosures whenever the cookie crumbles.”
Another official described the planted story in Daily Trust as the “dumbest story of the year, after the one on Yar’Adua playing with animals in the Presidential Villa.” He stressed: “Daily Trust quoted Modibbo’s response to the minister’s query on a N1.9 billion textbooks’ printing contract. Here they miss the point. We are talking of over N20 billion he and his wife siphoned from NTI and UBEC from 2005 to date, using existing and phony companies and they are talking of printing of textbooks. We know that for every N10 million printing contract Modibbo gave Evans, Heinemann Publishers, Longman or Macmillan, Binana got N50 million, so what are we talking about?”
Officials of the Federal Ministry of Education who spoke to us described the minister’s query as a “smokescreen” designed to justify the N50 million “welcome package” Modibbo handed her shortly after her confirmation by the Senate. “Modibbo had told close friends that he was unshaken by the removal of his ally, former minister of state, Aishatu Dukku since, according to him, a greater pal in the person of Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai was coming to take over the education ministry as substantive minister.”
Another official scoffed at the investigations reportedly being conducted by the education committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives. “Like our Lord Jesus said, ‘a demon cannot cast out a demon.’ With due respect, members of the education committees of the National Assembly cannot lift a finger against Modibbo. They have been so compromised that Modibbo has become the one doing the oversight functions, whilst they scramble for the crumbs that fall off his table in UBEC.
“The most worrying case is the chairman of House committee on education, Lawal Farouk. This midget has practically become Modibbo’s errand boy, all in a bid to fatten the man’s support for his governorship ambition for Kano State in 2011. These lawmakers can joke about summoning the heads of parastatals in the education ministry, but definitely not carry the joke to the point of inviting Modibbo. If the lawmakers want anything from Modibbo, they have to drive to Modibbo’s office in Wuse Zone 4. That is how compromised the lawmakers in the education committees have become.”
He added: “Modibbo has told friends that, Insha Allahu, by 2011 his wife would have become the chairman of the House of Representatives’ committee on education so he as UBEC boss doesn’t have to run around to package millions for the lawmakers each time they are broke.”
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the biometrics project for which Binani pocketed N330 million for 2006, 2007 and 2008, could not have cost taxpayers more than N40 million had Modibbo awarded the contract to reputable firms involved in biometrics technology.
In a proposal to Modibbo by a certain Justouch Resources, which claimed to be the exclusive distributor of Biometrics Fingerprint Time Attendance Control Machine in Nigeria, the company offered the UBEC boss the Miaxis 750 Fingerprint Time Attendance Machine for N425, 000, the Miaxis 730 for N400, 000, and the Miaxis 460 Fingerprint Access Control Reader for N250, 000 per set. The proposal came before Modibbo awarded the contract to his wife’s company, Binani Nigeria Ltd. for N110 million.
“We are confident that our biometric fingerprint machine will completely eliminate the problems associated with paper attendance record,” wrote Christof Resources in the proposal obtained by Saharareporters, explaining, “it is a portable stand alone device which has the capacity to store 2000 fingerprints and 50, 000 attendance records.”
The company said of their digital product, “Each employee signs in just once and would prevent multiple entries of names by one person or signing in for another employee which is inherent with paper attendance found in many companies today.”
Explained an NTI official: “The costliest range of the machines offered by Christof Resources was N425, 000 per set which they said could store 2000 fingerprints. Modibbo claimed that he would camp 145, 000 participants. Now, at 2000 fingerprints per machine, it follows that about 75 machines would be required to process 145, 000 fingerprints. At N425, 000 per set, 75 machines would have cost less than N32 million. At the most, installation and maintenance would have cost another N8 million, bringing it to N40 million; and these machines would have still served for another three to five years.
“Yet, Modibbo approved N110 million for his wife’s company, Binani, to provide “Biometrics” in 2006. In 2007, he gave Binani another N110 million and yet the same sum in 2008, bringing the total sum to N330 million in three years. Even at that, the enchantress simply pocketed the money and asked participants to sign on A4 paper and have their thumbs printed on it, with a promise that the prints would be scanned into computers in ‘our offices.’ Of course, this fitted into Modibbo’s original design, because not even a quarter of the 145, 000 he claimed actually participated, and it couldn’t have been in his best interest for any machine to accurately capture any evidence that would put a lie to his bogus claim since he had pocketed the difference,” the official revealed.
Appearing undaunted, Modibbo has reportedly concluded moves to have Aishatu, his recently wedded wife and CEO of the notorious Binani Group, the front used to siphon UBEC’s billions, displace the member representing Yola North/South/Gerei Federal constituency in the House of Representatives, Sa’ad Tahir, in the 2011 general elections. Already, Aishatu has flooded major streets of Yola, the Adamawa State capital, with her very colourful posters.
The billionaire owner of the notorious Binani Group has reportedly begun mobilizing by distributing such items as sewing machines, milling machines, motorcycles and bags of rice to stakeholders in her Yola North/South/Gerei Federal Constituency ahead of the PDP primaries which she has reportedly promised would be a walkover for her.
If elected next year, family sources told us that Aishatu’s ultimate desire is to become the chairman of the House of Representatives’ committee on education “so that she can use her office to further feather her investments’ nest, particularly the proposed multi-billion naira school along the Abuja airport road, which she boasts would make the late Maryam Babangida’s el-Amin International School, a child’s play.”
Also joined as defendant in the suit is the Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai, a former commissioner of education in Jigawa State, who is believed to have been seriously compromised by Modibbo since she assumed office two months ago. The Minister’s personal assistant, Yakubu Abbass, and another assistant, Dr. Sagir, are on “secondment” from Modibbo.
In the suit, Number FHC/ABJ/CS/386/2010 filed on June 3, 2010, the group is seeking, among other things, “a declaration that the 1st defendant (education minister) should order a thorough investigation of the activities of the Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Ahmed Modibbo on allegations of corruption against him.”
The group is further seeking “a declaration that the second defendant (EFCC) commences investigation against Dr. Ahmed Modibbo with a view to making corruption charges against him” and another “declaration that it is in line with the spirit of the current war against corruption by the present government in Nigeria to sanitize the system, that adequate investigation be carried out against Dr. Modibbo.”
The NGO is also seeking “a declaration that it would amount to injustice against millions of helpless Nigerian children who are meant to be direct beneficiaries of the UBEC scheme if proper investigation is not carried out against the corrupt activities of Dr. Modibbo.”
In a 15-paragraph statement of claim by U.M. Ibekwe of King’s chambers, the lawyer stated: “The first defendant is the public officer charged by the Federal Government of Nigeria to promote, supervise and ensure the proper implementation of government educational policies and programmes in the country from the primary, secondary to the tertiary levels.
“The plaintiff avers that it is in recognition of its abiding duty to assist government to fight corruption that it brings this suit as a whistle blower to point to the corrupt activities of the Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Ahmed Modibbo.
“That the company profile found in CAC revealed that Dr. Ahmed Modibbo’s wife is the owner of such companies as Binani Nigeria Ltd., Binwa Press Limited, Triangular Communications Ltd, Golden Crescent Nigeria Ltd, Infinity Telecoms Ltd, and Quest Ventures that are major contractors with UBEC.
“In a well chronicled investigation carried out by Saharareporters published recently on the Internet, it was revealed that Dr. Modibbo has defrauded UBEC of over N7 billion Naira through fraudulent contracts aided and abetted by some members of the cabal in the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s government.
“That various comments that accompanied the publication of Modibbo’s corrupt activities by Sahararerporters throw a strong challenge on the government to fully demonstrate its willingness to fight corruption and bring sanity to our society even if the heavens fall,” the lawyer claimed.
Checks by Saharareporters however revealed that the move by Peace Building and Humanitarian Initiatives to have EFCC prosecute Modibbo may prove to be an uphill task, as the UBEC boss has employed the services of another NGO Nigeria Development Initiative (NDI), to frustrate the suit.
In a most incredulous but symbolic move, Modibbo has invited the heavily compromised EFCC chairperson, Mrs. Farida Waziri, her colleague in the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), as well as the chairman, Code of Conduct Bureau, Mr. Sam Asaba, to a “National Anti-corruption Forum” billed to hold on Wednesday 16th June, 2010 at the Abuja Sheraton Hotels and Towers.
Shortly after we ran stories on how Modibbo and his wife siphon UBEC, NTI and MDG billions, a UBEC source disclosed, “Modibbo quickly assembled a battery of consultants who advised that the best way to confront the issues, apart from the millions they doled out to Nigerian journalists, was to organize an anti-corruption forum and have the heads of EFCC, ICPC and Code of Conduct Bureau, attend.”
According to the source, “the consultants had argued that hosting the chairpersons of the relevant anti-graft agencies to a National anti-Corruption Forum would tremendously boost Modibbo’s image and water down whatever has been said or written about his activities in NTI and UBEC.”
“I know Waziri will attend the forum because Modibbo constantly ‘settles’ her. What I am not sure is if the revered Justice Ayoola and the venerable Asaba would bring themselves to attend such a charade, because they ought to have arraigned Modibbo for corruption and breaching the code of conduct for public officers. But for sabotage on the part of Ayoola’s lieutenant, Dr. Uriah Angulu, Modibbo’s Man Friday and former colleague in ABU, Zaria, the commission would have at least made some feeble attempts to investigate the UBEC boss. Can Waziri, Ayoola or Asaba swear they have not read of the allegations against Modibbo?” he asked.
Continuing, our source said, “Nothing could be more ludicrous. Imagine the Inspector-General of Police attending a function organized by the late notorious armed robber, Lawrence Anini, or the NDLEA boss attending a seminar organized by a drug baron? The Code of Conduct Bureau prosecuted former FCT minister Nasir el-Rufai for awarding a plot of land to his wife. The case at hand is Modibbo, who keeps abusing his office by awarding all UBEC contracts to only to companies owned by his wife, Aishatu,” the official reasoned, adding, “well, let us see if they would prove us wrong on Wednesday by not attending that corruption summit.”
Sources close to Modibbo’s wife Aishatu told Saharareporters that the couple have been thoroughly discomfited by our reports, and have made desperate attempts to reach out to those “who would have to seal their fate,” beginning with Nigerians journalists. Working through the Abuja editor of a newspaper owned by former Governor Bola Tinubu, all the bureau chiefs of media houses were ‘invited’ to hear Modibbo’s side of the story.”
At the end of the meeting, a source who witnessed the charade offered, “we were offered handsome amounts to ‘fuel our cars’’ and urged to discountenance what he claimed was a smear campaign launched by his suspended deputy in UBEC, Prof. Bridget Sokan and some publishers he claimed lost out of the printing contracts.
Said the source, “We ran away with the conclusion that Modibbo was guilty as charged, because he could not respond to any of the probing questions on his alleged siphoning of UBEC funds, particularly those from an editor of Peoples Daily,” adding, “we took the money or bribe because some of us felt justified that it was, after all, the stolen money meant for our children’s education that Modibbo was simply handing back.”
Family sources also hinted that Modibbo has moved his roguery a notch further by engaging the image-laundering services of Daily Trust, a sectional newspaper notorious for securing a retainership from the Late President Umaru Yar’Adu’s widow Turai, to run false and misleading stories of a fast recuperating Yar’Adua strolling on the grounds of Aso Presidential Villa, admiring the tweeting birds in the company of his many grandchildren.
Penultimate Sunday, Daily Trust ran a front page story of the Senate and the Minister handing Modibbo a clean bill of health after exhaustively investigating all the “allegations” leveled against him in our previous reports. Modibbo, according to the Daily Trust report, had satisfactorily responded to a query by his supervising minister, explaining that none of his wife’s companies benefited from the contracts to supply books.
The report was silent on whether or not Modibbo explained what nature of contract the website of his wife’s Binani Group proudly announces as “ongoing” in UBEC. Equally silent in the report was whether Modibbo explained how his wife’s companies, including those that were unregistered, were, in the first place, shortlisted by the Ministerial Tenders’ Board.
A top ministry official said he didn’t see the so-called query but that it ended up raising more questions. Among them, in his words:
• Is it that the honourable minister in the query didn’t or forgot to ask Modibbo how his wife’s company, Binani, pocketed N333 million as consultancy fees for the Federal Teachers’ Scheme (FTS) which he supervised, or got N110 million each year for three years for the phantom biometrics exercise for the MDG programmes?
• “I wonder if the minister asked Modibbo how two of his wife’s companies, Binwa Press Ltd and Ojunwa Press Ltd which were incorporated on 7th and 8th May 2009 respectively, could have been announced as two of the firms pre-qualified by UBEC in an advertorial Modibbo signed and was published six months earlier in the Thisday and Daily Trust newspapers of November 5, 2008?
• “One also wonders if the minister asked Modibbo to explain if it was by sheer coincidence that all the six of the companies, including Binwa Press Ltd, which hadn’t been registered at the time, that purportedly won the 29th December, 2008, contract worth N186 million to supply instructional materials for physically-challenged children belong to his wife?
• “And did the minister ask how her Tenders’ Board came about Al-Mala Ventures and Ginyike Ventures that have been confirmed by the CAC to be non-existent?
• “The minister would also have done a good job in asking her partner-in-crime how he could have awarded an NTI printing contract to Ojunwa Press Ltd in August 1997, when CAC records reveal that the same company was incorporated in May 2009?”
Commenting further, he said, “Since Saharareporters broke the scandal, they have been running from pillar to post, not knowing how to handle the matter. Apparently, they have been in touch with their godfathers in the offices of the SSS, SGF, MDG, and, of course, the Bureau for Public Procurement. We have since come to realize that the syndicate is larger than we imagined. Modibbo has been blackmailing them that he won’t go down alone, that he would make full disclosures whenever the cookie crumbles.”
Another official described the planted story in Daily Trust as the “dumbest story of the year, after the one on Yar’Adua playing with animals in the Presidential Villa.” He stressed: “Daily Trust quoted Modibbo’s response to the minister’s query on a N1.9 billion textbooks’ printing contract. Here they miss the point. We are talking of over N20 billion he and his wife siphoned from NTI and UBEC from 2005 to date, using existing and phony companies and they are talking of printing of textbooks. We know that for every N10 million printing contract Modibbo gave Evans, Heinemann Publishers, Longman or Macmillan, Binana got N50 million, so what are we talking about?”
Officials of the Federal Ministry of Education who spoke to us described the minister’s query as a “smokescreen” designed to justify the N50 million “welcome package” Modibbo handed her shortly after her confirmation by the Senate. “Modibbo had told close friends that he was unshaken by the removal of his ally, former minister of state, Aishatu Dukku since, according to him, a greater pal in the person of Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai was coming to take over the education ministry as substantive minister.”
Another official scoffed at the investigations reportedly being conducted by the education committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives. “Like our Lord Jesus said, ‘a demon cannot cast out a demon.’ With due respect, members of the education committees of the National Assembly cannot lift a finger against Modibbo. They have been so compromised that Modibbo has become the one doing the oversight functions, whilst they scramble for the crumbs that fall off his table in UBEC.
“The most worrying case is the chairman of House committee on education, Lawal Farouk. This midget has practically become Modibbo’s errand boy, all in a bid to fatten the man’s support for his governorship ambition for Kano State in 2011. These lawmakers can joke about summoning the heads of parastatals in the education ministry, but definitely not carry the joke to the point of inviting Modibbo. If the lawmakers want anything from Modibbo, they have to drive to Modibbo’s office in Wuse Zone 4. That is how compromised the lawmakers in the education committees have become.”
He added: “Modibbo has told friends that, Insha Allahu, by 2011 his wife would have become the chairman of the House of Representatives’ committee on education so he as UBEC boss doesn’t have to run around to package millions for the lawmakers each time they are broke.”
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the biometrics project for which Binani pocketed N330 million for 2006, 2007 and 2008, could not have cost taxpayers more than N40 million had Modibbo awarded the contract to reputable firms involved in biometrics technology.
In a proposal to Modibbo by a certain Justouch Resources, which claimed to be the exclusive distributor of Biometrics Fingerprint Time Attendance Control Machine in Nigeria, the company offered the UBEC boss the Miaxis 750 Fingerprint Time Attendance Machine for N425, 000, the Miaxis 730 for N400, 000, and the Miaxis 460 Fingerprint Access Control Reader for N250, 000 per set. The proposal came before Modibbo awarded the contract to his wife’s company, Binani Nigeria Ltd. for N110 million.
“We are confident that our biometric fingerprint machine will completely eliminate the problems associated with paper attendance record,” wrote Christof Resources in the proposal obtained by Saharareporters, explaining, “it is a portable stand alone device which has the capacity to store 2000 fingerprints and 50, 000 attendance records.”
The company said of their digital product, “Each employee signs in just once and would prevent multiple entries of names by one person or signing in for another employee which is inherent with paper attendance found in many companies today.”
Explained an NTI official: “The costliest range of the machines offered by Christof Resources was N425, 000 per set which they said could store 2000 fingerprints. Modibbo claimed that he would camp 145, 000 participants. Now, at 2000 fingerprints per machine, it follows that about 75 machines would be required to process 145, 000 fingerprints. At N425, 000 per set, 75 machines would have cost less than N32 million. At the most, installation and maintenance would have cost another N8 million, bringing it to N40 million; and these machines would have still served for another three to five years.
“Yet, Modibbo approved N110 million for his wife’s company, Binani, to provide “Biometrics” in 2006. In 2007, he gave Binani another N110 million and yet the same sum in 2008, bringing the total sum to N330 million in three years. Even at that, the enchantress simply pocketed the money and asked participants to sign on A4 paper and have their thumbs printed on it, with a promise that the prints would be scanned into computers in ‘our offices.’ Of course, this fitted into Modibbo’s original design, because not even a quarter of the 145, 000 he claimed actually participated, and it couldn’t have been in his best interest for any machine to accurately capture any evidence that would put a lie to his bogus claim since he had pocketed the difference,” the official revealed.
Appearing undaunted, Modibbo has reportedly concluded moves to have Aishatu, his recently wedded wife and CEO of the notorious Binani Group, the front used to siphon UBEC’s billions, displace the member representing Yola North/South/Gerei Federal constituency in the House of Representatives, Sa’ad Tahir, in the 2011 general elections. Already, Aishatu has flooded major streets of Yola, the Adamawa State capital, with her very colourful posters.
The billionaire owner of the notorious Binani Group has reportedly begun mobilizing by distributing such items as sewing machines, milling machines, motorcycles and bags of rice to stakeholders in her Yola North/South/Gerei Federal Constituency ahead of the PDP primaries which she has reportedly promised would be a walkover for her.
If elected next year, family sources told us that Aishatu’s ultimate desire is to become the chairman of the House of Representatives’ committee on education “so that she can use her office to further feather her investments’ nest, particularly the proposed multi-billion naira school along the Abuja airport road, which she boasts would make the late Maryam Babangida’s el-Amin International School, a child’s play.”
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