The Director-General of the National Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC), Lanre Gbajabiamila, the Board chairman, and its directors, have been accused of monumental fraud, abuse of office, massive corruption, and unlawful diversion of public funds.
Senate Committee on Finance on Monday said that it has uncovered alleged monumental fraud of over N75billion in the National Lottery Trust of Fund, NLTF.
This is even as the agency was also accused of violating due process in the award of contract worth N1.12 billion tagged “Intervention budget distribution” which was requested for in a letter dated 12 March, 2014.
Chairman of the Senate panel, Senator Solomon Adeola (APC Lagos West) disclosed these yesterday in Abuja during the ongoing Investigation into the remittances by ministries departments and agencies, MDAs from 2014 to 2020 and payment of one percent stamp duty on all contract awards within same period.
According to Adeola, NLTF, during the period under review declared N7 billion, but said further investigation by the committee revealed that the money spent on good course is more than what was declared by the agency as Internally Generated Revenue IGR and therefore demanded explanation on the source of the excess fund spent by the agency.
He said: “We discovered another monumental fraud from the National Lottery Trust Fund for money ordinarily should have been used for good course in accordance with their Act.
“The total money accruing to them in the period under review is about N7 billion but by the time we marry this money with the good course to be provided, we noticed that the amount expended on good course is even more than the amount that is declared.
“And the question is where do you get this excess fund? Do you have any other source of income? The answer is no. And what that simply implies is under declaration of revenue.”
The total procurement cost for the contract awarded without due process was N800 million, while consultancy service was N185 million and the Public Awareness and Media cost N50 million while N50 million was spent on project administration and N25 million was spent on contingency.
Findings by our correspondent revealed that the consultancy fee which was about N185 million was expected to be N80 million which was the 10% of the contract cost.
