How Nigeria Police Awarded N1.7Billion Safe School Contracts To Two Firms Linked To Same Owner Under Ex-IGP Egbetokun – Report

A SaharaReporters review of the public payments portal, Govspend, has exposed suspected contract splitting allegedly carried out by the Nigeria Police Force under the leadership of Kayode Egbetokun in the award of Safe School projects.

According to the review of the portal, on November 28, 2023, a contract worth N874 million was awarded to Dalori Global Engineering Limited for “Safe School Intervention Projects” in the North-Central geopolitical region of Nigeria.

Checks on the Corporate Affairs Commission’s beneficial ownership register show that the company is owned by “Baba Bukar Aji”, who is listed as the sole person with significant control.

On the same date, November 28, 2023, another N874 million contract was awarded to Hikam Engineering and Consulting Limited for a “Safe School Intervention Project” in the South-West region of the country.

Checks of the Corporate Affairs Commission’s beneficial ownership register show that one of the directors of the company is “Bukar Baba Aji”, the same person listed as the sole person with significant control of Dalori Global Engineering Limited.

Other directors of Hikam Engineering include “Yagana Baba Aji”, Hassan Baba Aji, Babagana Baba Aji, and Abubakar Baba Aji.

In total, the two companies linked to Baba Bukar Aji received similar contracts worth about N1.7 billion.

The Safe Schools Initiative (SSI) was launched in 2014 following the Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction and was designed to improve safety in schools across the country.

A lawyer and corporate procurement expert, Awosusi Kehinde, has raised concerns over the award of similar contracts under the project to two companies owned by the same individual, describing the practice as contract splitting.

Kehinde said the development raises serious suspicions of foul play and contract manipulation.

“This kind of development qualifies as contract splitting, an act that the procurement law frowns about,” he said.

He questioned how one person could use two different companies to win similar contracts and not use the same company if there were no foul play.

“It may be argued that a company is independent of its owner but in this case, there are questions about conflict of interest and materiality of the awards to these companies owned by the same person,” the lawyer said.

He urged anti-graft agencies to investigate the contract award process with a view to establishing whether due process was truly followed.

Meanwhile, SaharaReporters had previously reported how former Inspector-General of Police, Egbetokun, split a N6 billion police uniform contract into 66 smaller contracts and awarded all of them to a single company with known links to him, in apparent violation of the Public Procurement Act.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Egbetokun diverted the N6 billion from the police operational account’s budgetary sub-head into a private procurement arrangement for uniforms.

The funds were funnelled to a single company through a process that violated procurement regulations.

“As IGP, his approval threshold is N100 million. Any amount above that requires ministerial approval, and anything exceeding N500 million must be presented to the Federal Executive Council (FEC),” one source explained, adding that the company was linked to Egbetokun.

To bypass these statutory procedures, Egbetokun allegedly resorted to contract splitting, an act prohibited under the Public Procurement Act. He divided the N6 billion uniform procurement into 66 separate contracts, all awarded to the same company, and began processing payments in instalments. (SaharaReporters)