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An audit of the Natural Resources Fund under the federal ministry of agriculture and water resources has uncovered a fraud of N96 billion. The fund was set aside by the federal government to take care of natural disasters whose repercussions prove beyond the capacities of state governments to remedy.

About 4.5 per cent of the Federation Account is set aside to make provisions for natural disasters such as erosions, and 1.6 per cent of the fund is used for the development of natural resources, including support for agriculture, solid minerals and river basin development activities.

Presidency sources said yesterday in Abuja that the fraud, which has since been traced to the managers of the ministry’s Agricultural and Food Seed Programme, was discovered when the outgoing chairman of the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Hamman Tukur, who is retiring from service, ordered an auditing as part of the handing over process.

Central bank’s records of the Federation Accounts Income and Expenditure financial statement for the natural resources fund last year, show that the balance of the account brought forward from the previous year reduced from a total of about N110.5 billion at the beginning of January to about N73.5 billion by last December.

No official of the agriculture ministry could offer any insight on how the sum of N95.186 billion released on August 25, 2009 for the Agricultural and Food Seed Programme was used.

Most of the officials who spoke with NEXT referred our correspondent to the immediate past minister of agriculture and water resources, Sayyadi Abba Ruma.

The officials were also unable to explain what another N1 billion released to the ministry on August 31, 2009 was spent on, and attempts to reach Mr Ruma had to be aborted when he could not be reached on his phones. He had apparently changed numbers since he ceased to be a minister.

Sources claimed that the N95 billion may have been diverted for the construction of new silos to boost the country’s grain storage and food production capacities. There is however a $150million World Bank-supported special intervention funding facility to government for the completion of this particular project.

One billion naira was also allegedly used for the development of some water resources projects at various locations across the country.

Though the silos was initiated under the federal government’s agro-allied value chain infrastructure development project slated for 20 states and scheduled for completion next year, indications are that nothing is happening at most of the selected sites.

Twenty years

The silos, with a combined storage capacity of 1.025 million metric tonnes, were to be located in the different grains producing parts of the country, including Ekiti, Kebbi, Zamfara, Borno, Imo and Bayelsa states as well as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, all of which have 100,000 metric tonnes capacity.

Those at Yobe, Bauchi, Osun, Nasarawa, Taraba, Ogun, Anambra, Kogi, Sokoto, Akwa Ibom, Adamawa, Kano and Katsina states have about 25,000 metric tonnes capacity.

The contracts for the construction of the silos were awarded more than 20 years ago, but Mr. Ruma had said during a visit to the Abuja facility located near the National Food Reserve Agency, Gwagwalada, that construction work was only completed on 11 of them, while the rest 14 were abandoned. He said there was need for government to invest in the completion of the silos to provide storage for the production of grains such as rice, beans, maize, soya beans, millet, wheat as well as other food items.

A case against the contract for one of the silos in Akwa Ibom allegedly inflated by over N500 million, was last month filed at the Federal High Court, Abuja by Baraj Nigeria Limited, which claimed that it was manipulated out of the award on Mr. Ruma’s directives.