Paul Omokuvie, Bauchi
The controversy surrounding the alleged N2.3 billion spent on a burial by the immediate past governor of Bauchi State, Mohammed Abubakar, has received renewed public scrutiny, this time from the state’s Funds and Assets Recovery Committee.
The special adviser to the former governor, Ali M. Ali, had debunked media reports at the inception of the present PDP state administration that the contract for the supply of mahogany and shrouds was awarded at a cost of N1.3 billion and not N2.3 billion, as was being reported in the media.
However, a committee spokesman Umar Barau Ningi, at a press conference in Bauchi, said the contract for the supply of the materials was awarded by the past administration to an array of companies, including one Engineering & Design Company between 2016 and January 2019.
According to the contract, Umar Ningi explained, the materials were to be supplied to Bauchi Central Cemetery, Azare, Misau, Ningi, Jama’are, Dass, Toro, Gamawa, Darazo, and Alkaleri cemeteries, and “various locations” not properly defined.
Ningi revealed that the pieces of mahogany wood to be supplied were 573,000 at a cost of N1,568,033,810, while the total number of shrouds to be supplied was 66,000 bundles at the cost of N820,423,360; putting the total contract sum at N2,388,457,170.
“This outrageous contract implied that, at the worst-case scenario, at least 573,000 people would have died within this period for the mahogany to be exhausted, while the total number of 198,000 people must have died within the period for 66,000 bundles of shroud to be exhausted,” Ningi said.
A relevant ministry in the state handling the two related matters has, in the meantime, approached Governor Bala Mohammed for approval to supply more of such materials at over N1.5 million. Ningi said that investigations would be concluded when the committee confirmed the death figures from various locations to access the true position of whether the materials could truly be said to have been exhausted.
Media investigations confirm that the death figure presently at the Bauchi Central Cemetery ever since the commencement of its use in the Yuguda administration, which provided the cemetery, was not up to 60,000, according to officials overseeing the cemetery.