Why we couldn’t detect $2.1bn arms scandal at N/Assembly - Sen Lawan

By Ismail Mudashir | Publish Date: Feb 6 2016 9:19PM | Updated Date: Feb 7 2016 5:13AM

Senator Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan (APC, Yobe North)

Senator Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan (APC, Yobe North) is chairman of the Senate Committee on Defence. In this interview, Lawan, who was chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts in the last Assembly, explains why the National Assembly couldn’t detect the $2.1bn arms scandal.

It is widely believed that failure of the National Assembly to discharge its constitutional responsibilities effectively contributed to a large extent to the alleged diversion of $2.1bn meant for the purchase arms for the fight against insurgency. How come you didn’t detect the diversion?
Let me commend President Muhammadu Buhari for his decisive and prompt actions in investigating the arms procurement scandal. This is particularly very significant and important because most of the setbacks Nigeria has faced in the fight against insurgency in the country, especially in the North-East could be easily attributable to lack of weapons and motivation of our armed forces. So the president has done very well by investigating the diversion of funds.
The issue of the failure of the National Assembly in over-sighting and detecting this thing was because not all information or revenue is available to members of the National Assembly. I agree that the National Assembly should have done better and more to detect flagrant abuse and misappropriation of public funds. I want to say that the executive arm of government at that time willfully embezzled these funds without appropriation; without anybody knowing except those in the circle. And for me, this is not restricted to the arms scandal; I believe that so many similar activities have equally taken place, may be in the NNPC, and pretty soon, I’m sure we will have reasons to look at that direction and some other agencies. Recently, we learnt that even in NIMASA they were giving out money without any contract agreement.
So, I believe that it is the failure of the two arms of government. One, the failure of the National Assembly to detect it because the National Assembly is not capacitated to know the kind of underhand dealings with public funds by the executive arm of government at that time. These funds were not appropriated for at all. The ones that were appropriated as far as I can remember in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 close to N1 trillion each of these years were appropriated for the defense sector by the National Assembly. We also approved a loan of $1bn in 2014. That was all we knew; we didn’t know that $2.1bn was given to someone to share to people; we didn’t have such privileged information and that was our failure. But it was very, very bad that people in the executive arm of government who were entrusted with public resources embezzled such resources to the detriment of the entire country, particularly when we were supposed to fight insurgency with that fund.

What do you mean that you lacked capacity to detect even when the funds were removed from government coffers? 
When something comes to the surface, and you have funds and you have the accounts, then you can look at the accounts and know where the funds are.  Until President Buhari came to office, I’m sure even the former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan didn’t know that there were over 200 accounts owned by the various MDAs in the Federal Civil Service. One organisation alone has 70 accounts. Unless you know where these funds are, you can’t detect misappropriation. This is why I’m saying the National Assembly is not capacitated because if you have the wherewithal to know about these monies, then you can ask questions. Why are these monies sitting there? Why has someone tampered with and what have you? But if you had no inkling on the funds, then what do you do? We could be held responsible for not opening our eyes but if you are not capacitated, there is no amount of opening of your eyes that will make you see these. This is not to absolve the National Assembly of blame, we take the blame. We are supposed to do better and enhance our capacity, this is an eye opener.
Today, we have close to 80 percent of members of the National Assembly who are new to the system; you need to do a lot more to get such members to perform effectively and efficiently. This is the capacity building I’m talking about. Also, it has become very clear to us that when you are electing leaders, elect the ones that are trustworthy, who have integrity and patriotism. There is no reason why someone will take public funds to the tune of $2.1bn; he doesn’t have to be told that it is wrong to do so. So, it is a lesson to us.

Is it the responsibility of the National Security Adviser to purchase arms for the Armed Forces?
Procurement belongs to the services; they do their procurement. I don’t know how it happened in the last administration that the National Security Adviser was in charge of everything.

What are you going to do differently this time around to forestall a repeat of this scenario?
I think it is beyond one committee to deal with the situation. In fact, both chambers of the National Assembly - all of us legislators in the Senate and House of Representatives - have to sit up because we definitely deserve good percentage of the blame for the things that have just been unraveled. And when it comes to procurement, you have so many committees that need to be involved.
Appropriation committee at the beginning, the finance and then the defence and all the National Assembly committees on Navy, Air force, police and national intelligence must insist by ensuring that no procurement takes place without the committees knowing. We are not supposed to be involved in the procurement but we should know. If they said they are procuring weapons, we must know when such procurements are done. Certain issues on national security cannot be discussed in the public but we represent the public so, we have to insist on knowing even the kinds of equipment we have. We can take presentation in camera just for us to know that nothing is amiss. So we need to do this much more frequently.
I also believe there is need for serious partnership and collaboration between the legislature and the executive arms of government. This is because sometimes, the civil servants could decide to do somethings that even the political heads, the ministers, may not understand talk-less of the legislators that are far away from what they are doing. So, there is need for serious collaboration between the two arms of government. I don’t think a single committee can bring change but I believe when we collaborate between the various committees in the first instance and then with the executive arm, we can make things better.
 There will always be people who have the courage to do the wrong things but we must make ourselves better prepared to deal with this kind of situation; we don’t need to wait until such things happen. We need to be asking questions, we need to be proactive and there is need for the executive arm of government to always be forthcoming with information, when we ask they should tell us. I think we have learnt our lessons and I believe we can do better to prevent this kind of thing from reoccurring.

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