IDP Contract Fraud: “The Senate Is Talking Balderdash” – SGF Babachir Lawal Slams Senators For Calling For His Sack, Prosecution

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, has reacted to the call by the Senate for him to be sacked and prosecuted over his alleged involvement in IDP contract fraud.

The senate yesterday received the Interim Report of The Ad-Hoc Committee on Mounting Humanitarian Crisis in the North East. In the report, the SGF who oversees the Presidential Initiative for North East PINE, was alleged to have used his office to secure bogus contracts for a company which he is still a signatory to (Read here).

Shehu Sani who is the chairman of the senate committee, told the members of the senate that investigations showed that an IT company, Rhola Vision Engineering Limited, which Babachir founded in 1990, was awarded a contract of N270 million to clear grasses at an IDP camp in Yobe state.

“Although, Lawal resigned the directorship of the said company in September 2016, it is on record that he is a signatory to the accounts of the company’’, Sani said.

Speaking to National Assembly correspondents after the 2017 budget presentation by President Buhari yesterday, Babachir said the senate was talking balderdash.

“The Senate is talking balderdash. It has developed the habit of bring him Down syndrome. Nigerians have decided that we should destroy our best. We should all destroy the promising and best among us by bringing people down without a cause. This is just how I saw it. I have the report of the Senate Committee in which it was said that I didn’t resign from Rholavision Nigeria Limited. Let me tell you, Rholavision was formed by me in December 1990, and it has been a company that was run very successfully. Now, when I was appointed Secretary to the Government of the Federation, I resigned from that company on 18th August 2015. I can see that in their report, they are talking about 2016. I don’t know where they got their facts. By the way, it is very instructive that when the committee was sitting, no effort was ever made to invite me to come and make a submission. It is therefore, surprising that they devoted a whole session to maligning me, claiming what is not true without even giving me the chance to come and put my own case before them” he said.