President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, through the Office of the Special Assistant to the President on Niger Delta Affairs, Diverted the sum of N2.63 billion, Monthly Stipends meant for Niger Delta Ex-militants who are beneficiaries to 10 different personal accounts own by Some Leaders between March and May 2021, daily payment data from the Open Treasury Portal (OTP) have revealed.
Data obtained from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation through Govspend.ng reveal that the monies were stipends to delegates who were mostly ex-militants in the Niger Delta region.
The monies were stipends to delegates who were mostly ex-militants in the Niger Delta region, according to the data obtained from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation through Govspend.ng.
The data curated from the platform revealed further that, N1.6billion was paid in March, N452.2 million in April, and N574.8 million in May, of which most payments were described as ‘bulk payment of stipends to camp leaders…’ and ‘bulk payment of stipends to ex-agitators for the month…’
Awotongha Princewill B – N99 million,
Cyril Harry – N79.2 million,
Dasimaka Adokiye Sami – N914.9 million, Ebikabowei Victor Ben – N716.9 million, and Harry Tonye Ikemenjeme – N197.4 million are among the names of individuals whose accounts were credited with the payments.
Others includes:
Joseph Evah – N110.4 million,
Odiki Jacob – N241.3 million,
Reuben C. Wilson – N130.6 million,
Sylvester A. Tambo – N10 million, and Torughedi Selky – N128.3 million.
The ICIR searched each of the names on social media platforms, to identify those behind the names listed. While it was difficult to connect some of the names on the list to the results on our query, some names appeared to be the real receivers of these monies.
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For Instance, Dasimaka Adokiye Sami received the highest sum of N914.9 million as a stipend for 2,802 ex-militants in the Ateke Tom camp.
Ateke Tom was the former leader of the Niger Delta Vigilante, a militant group in the Niger Delta region.
Joseph Evah is the current national coordinator of the Ijaw Monitoring Group (IMG). He received the sum of N110.4 million into his personal account as stipends for ex-militants.
Ebikabowei Victor-Ben, also known as ‘General Boyloaf,’ is the former commander of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).
According to the data, Ebikabowei received the second-highest sum of N716.9 million on behalf of over 200 ex-militants in his camp.
BudgIT’s Chief Executive Officer Gabriel Okeowo said the platform’s objective was to provide machine-readable data that would be readily available, accessible, and downloadable, while speaking about the platform’s launch.
“The Federal Government has done a great job in ensuring that the government’s daily spending is in the public domain. However, data on the portal are mostly non-machine readable and not downloadable. We developed the govspend.ng portal to rectify this issue,” Okeowo said.
He added that the OTP provides public access to collated data on government spending at the federal level, the platform seeks to simplify treasury reports uploaded on the portal for citizen’s, civil society organisations (CSOs) and the media to access, monitor, and understand the Federal Government’s real-time expenditure. (ICIR)
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