Reps Probe N9bn COVID-19 Fund Paid Into NCDC Officials’ Accounts

The committee had on Friday grilled the Director-General of the NCDC, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, over the centre’s spending.

Adetifa told the committee that the Federal Government, between March and December 2020, released to the NCDC N620m; March 2020 to March 2021, N5bn; and January 2021 to September 2021, N3.49bn.

Chairman of the committee, Oluwole Oke, however, raised the alarm over some irregularities in the disbursement of the funds, noting that some of the money were paid into the private accounts of some staff members.

Adetifa, however, referred the query to NCDC’s procurement officer, Dania Augustus, who said money was usually paid into the account of any staff member who raised a memo for any expenditure.

Augustus also said it was considered necessary to pay into the private accounts at the time due the urgency of the COVID-19 response.

Members of the committee, however, faulted the process as violating procurement laws.

Oke particularly stated that there was no justification for paying such an amount of money to any worker directly.

Consequently, the committee demanded all relevant records on how the funds were expended at the next hearing.

Adetifa explained that the N9bn was used for renovation and construction of infectious diseases, treatment and isolation centres across Abuja and some states as well as construction of treatment of isolation and treatment centres, procurement of medical and laboratory equipment and logistics and supply chain.

Other items of expenditure, he said, were recruitment of ad hoc staff and human resource support, procurement of lab supplies, response operations at national and state emergency operations centres, deployment of rapid response teams for outbreak investigation and response, training of health care workers on case management and surveillance, media and risk communications and tax, among others.

Members of the House of Representatives during plenary.