Six months after Nigeria’s Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) vowed to commence an immediate probe of seven non-governmental organizations implicated in the misuse of hundreds of millions of dollars meant for programmes of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Nigeria, the Commission has yet to invite even a single suspect for questioning.
Repeated inquiries by SaharaReporters at the Commission in Nigeria reveal either outright disinterest, or stonewalling. In June, after the Global Fund contacted the Commission about the scandal, the ICPC expressed grave “concern” about the damage the audit could do to the reputation and image of Nigeria. Officials alluded to the indication by the Global Fund that it could terminate its funding of Nigerian organizations over the growing scandal.
Since then, however, the ICPC has gone curiously cold on the matter even as the Global Fund is moving ahead with plans to inflict heavy penalties on those countries where the fraud was perpetrated.
Two days ago, on November 1, Bloomberg News reported that some of the monies the Fund is trying to recover worldwide is as much as $19.2 million from grants in eight countries. “In Nigeria, money was siphoned to a person arrested in 2003 for money-laundering and smuggling diamonds that are mined and sold to support war,” it said.
In an October 7 story on the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Report on Nigeria, SaharaReporters said that the local grants, which were dated between 2003 and 2009, amounted to $682,149,515, of which $474,519,260 had already been disbursed. The OIG said it had undertaken the audit so as to assess whether the grants “had been used wisely to save lives in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
With reference to the broader enquiry, Bloomberg News said, “The reports, which examined $1 billion in grants, expand the extent of fraud and misuse of money discovered by internal investigators. The organization said last year it was seeking the recovery of $44.2 million in four nations for “grave misuse of funds.”
Last June, when the ICPC announced its intention to probe the local organizations involved, it named them as follows: the Yakubu Gowon Centre for International Co-operation; the National Action Committee on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria; the Society for Family Health; the National Malaria Control Program; the Association for Reproductive and Family Health; the Christian Health Association of Nigeria; and the CHAN-MEDIPHARM (MEDIPHARM).
Six months after Nigeria’s Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) vowed to commence an immediate probe of seven non-governmental organizations implicated in the misuse of hundreds of millions of dollars meant for programmes of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Nigeria, the Commission has yet to invite even a single suspect for questioning.
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Repeated inquiries by SaharaReporters at the Commission in Nigeria reveal either outright disinterest, or stonewalling. In June, after the Global Fund contacted the Commission about the scandal, the ICPC expressed grave “concern” about the damage the audit could do to the reputation and image of Nigeria. Officials alluded to the indication by the Global Fund that it could terminate its funding of Nigerian organizations over the growing scandal.
Since then, however, the ICPC has gone curiously cold on the matter even as the Global Fund is moving ahead with plans to inflict heavy penalties on those countries where the fraud was perpetrated.
Two days ago, on November 1, Bloomberg News reported that some of the monies the Fund is trying to recover worldwide is as much as $19.2 million from grants in eight countries. “In Nigeria, money was siphoned to a person arrested in 2003 for money-laundering and smuggling diamonds that are mined and sold to support war,” it said.
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In an October 7 story on the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Report on Nigeria, SaharaReporters said that the local grants, which were dated between 2003 and 2009, amounted to $682,149,515, of which $474,519,260 had already been disbursed. The OIG said it had undertaken the audit so as to assess whether the grants “had been used wisely to save lives in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
With reference to the broader enquiry, Bloomberg News said, “The reports, which examined $1 billion in grants, expand the extent of fraud and misuse of money discovered by internal investigators. The organization said last year it was seeking the recovery of $44.2 million in four nations for “grave misuse of funds.”
Last June, when the ICPC announced its intention to probe the local organizations involved, it named them as follows: the Yakubu Gowon Centre for International Co-operation; the National Action Committee on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria; the Society for Family Health; the National Malaria Control Program; the Association for Reproductive and Family Health; the Christian Health Association of Nigeria; and the CHAN-MEDIPHARM (MEDIPHARM).
Just as quickly, for some reason, the ICPC seems to have lost the desire to go after those responsible for the fraud. In Nigeria, that is usually a sign that people in powerful positions may have been benefitting from the largesse, and have moved to protect themselves by snuffing out any investigations.
The principal loser will be the ordinary Nigerian who, in the event of the Global Fund and similar institutions eliminating or cutting back on their programmes in Nigeria, would be exposed more widely to HIV & AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In September, the Board of the Global Fund Board adopted the report of its High-Level Independent Review Panel on Fiduciary Controls and Oversight Mechanisms, saying that the report presented “a compelling case for a rapid and urgent transformation” of the Fund.
The high-level panel was established as a result of the global media coverage that accompanied this year’s publication of the Fund's findings regarding misappropriation of Global Fund money by some recipients in certain African countries
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