A civil society group, Accountable Leadership for Better Nigeria Initiative, has asked the President Muhammadu Buhari, to reverse the approval of the concession agreement on Nigeria Customs Service Modernisation Project.
The memo for the said project, also called the E-customs Project, was passed during last Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council Meeting, presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
ALBNI, in a statement signed by its Executive Director, Remi Adebayo, on Monday, said the president must jettison the memo which is again to be presented at the FEC meeting on Wednesday, April 26, 2023, noting that any new approval for the project, as proposed by the Minister of Finance, would amount to “impunity and approving lawlessness on the part of the government”.
“The Accountable Leadership for Better Nigeria Initiative calls on President Buhari and the Federal Government to immediately reverse the controversial re-approval of the concession agreement on the Nigeria Customs Service Modernisation Project, also called the E-Customs Project,” the statement partly reads.
“President Buhari must jettison the extracts of the odious memo to be presented on Wednesday, April 26, at the FEC meeting! With a subsisting legal dispute and a valid court order in the aftermath of the first concession to Messrs E. Customs HC Project Limited on September 2, 2020, by the Federal Executive Council, any new approval as proposed by the Minister of Finance, amounts to impunity and approving lawlessness on the part of the government”.
Adebayo noted that Dipo Okpeseyi and Ahmed Raji, both Senior Advocates of Nigeria, had in separate letters, warned the Attorney General of the Federation and the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation of “underhand efforts being made to obtain FEC’s approval and or ratification of the re-award of the E-Customs Modernisation Project”.
ALBNI further stated that it was curious that Minister of State, Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mr Clem Agba, feigned ignorance of a pending court order on the matter while urging anti-graft agencies such as the ICPC and the EFCC to “investigate allegations that one Ahmadu Saleh, said to be a close ally of the Comptroller General of the NCS, Col. Hameed Ali (retd), is the biological brother of Zainab Jummai Umar-Ajijola, both directors of Bergman Security Consultants, the new concessionaire.”
The group said the hurried FEC approval on the e-Customs project was a deliberate contempt for an order of the court, in a desperate bid to empower cronies of retiring President Buhari before the end of his administration, while alleging that the project had been designed as a “retirement package” for the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (retd), who is the biological brother of Zainab Jummai Umar-Ajijola, and both directors of Bergman Security Consultants, the new concessionaire.
They called on the FG to reverse the approval of the FEC and await the outcome of the case which is still pending in court, adding that the action will position the outgoing Buhari-led government as law-abiding.
