The House of Representatives ad-hoc Committee on Disposal of Public Property headed by Majority Leader of the House, Hon. Julius Ihonvbere (APC; Edo) is investigating illegal auctioning activities by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA). The investigation of the agency is coming in the course of \u00a0the Committee\u2019s \u00a0probe into public property disposal by several \u00a0government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), including the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Railway Corporation, among others between 2010 and 2022. Before embarking on recess in July 2023, the House had resolved to set up an ad-hoc committee to investigate allegations of fictitious, inflated and questionable contract awards and mismanagement of funds by NIMASA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On September 15, during an investigative\nhearing of the ad-hoc Committee on allegations of illegal auctioning of public\nproperty and non-remittance of revenue realised into the Consolidated Revenue\nFund (CRF) account by NIMASA, the Committee questioned the giveaway prices at\nwhich the agency auctioned 82 of its vehicles in relation to their declared\nmarket values. All 82 cars were auctioned for a total sum of N5.8 million, well\nbelow their stipulated market values. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Members of the Committee also\nrequested for documentary evidence of remittance of proceeds of the auction\ninto the CRF account as required by the provisions of the Public Procurement\nAct and other applicable financial regulations. An Executive Director at\nNIMASA, Chudi Offodile who was present at the hearing, denied knowledge of the\nrequirement for auction proceeds to be paid into the CRF account and stated\nthat the revenue generated was paid to the account of the agency by the auctioneers.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chairman of the Committee\nexpressed concern over an advert placement by for the public auction of the 82 vehicles\nbelonging to NIMASA and the subsequent sale of all the vehicles a day after the\nadvert was placed, an occurrence he described as giving the impression of a\npre-arrangement. He also disclosed that the Committee was in receipt of\npetitions against NIMASA, alleging that the vehicles were sold to staff of the\nagency. According to him, the auctioneers engaged by the agency in the said\nauction appear to have been hired to \u2018rubber stamp\u2019 insider trading activities.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Committee requested a list\nof all the auctioneers and beneficiaries of the vehicles, evidence of contract\nawards to the auctioneers, relevant approvals, register of the agency\u2019s assets,\namong other documents to guide it in the course of its investigation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House of Representatives ad-hoc Committee on Disposal of Public Property headed by Majority Leader of the House, Hon. Julius Ihonvbere (APC; Edo) is investigating illegal auctioning activities by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA). The investigation of the agency is coming in the course of \u00a0the Committee\u2019s \u00a0probe into public property disposal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3397,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions\/3397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}