Corruption at Nigeria’s Ministry of Defence

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Under the UN control, 18 hospitals are being operated by contributing African countries. Countries get paid by the UN for the use of their facilities. Nigeria’s Level 2 hospital was established to support the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) in 2008. The hospital was later relocated to its temporary site in Timbuktu in 2013 to support MINUSMA (the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali).

Last year, a 1.4 millon dollar contract was signed for the relocation and refurbishment of this Nigeria hospital.

The UN was going to reimburse Nigeria for the work done. On July 21st, 2016, the Nigerian Minister of Defence, Brigadier Mansur Dan Ali, wrote the President Muhammadu Buhari, requesting an investment of $1,464,750 million for the project. The project was approved by Nigeria’s Presidency on November 9, and the requested funds were assigned to it.

Nigeria’s Ministry of Defence first assigned the contract to Kashalome Nigeria Limited, but then decided that it was too expensive and re-assigned it to the OPEMS company from Alhaji Yarima Ibrahim (also Adamu Usman) that had not participated in the original bidding process at all, and that had zero experience in such kind of works. Conditions of the contract included two months time limit to complete it. By the way, the office address of OPEMS Integrated Concepts Ltd. is at Garki market.

Now, more than one year later, the contract has not been executed and the final destination of the assigned budget is unknown. Nigeria has failed in meeting the August 2017 UN deadline for relocating the hospital to a new location, and has lost its credibility. Nigeria has just lost a chance to earn more than $1.4 million in foreign currency, and the UN has asked Rwanda to provide the facility following Nigeria’s failure.

Up to now, the only person who is being investigated is Brigadier General LYM Hassan, who is the coordinator of peacekeeping at the Nigerian ministry of defence. He is now at the court for having criticized Nigerian authorities regarding this affair.

(From Dr. Idris Ahmed and a communication from Moses Adedeji, “Trees on Earth Development”, Nigeria)