Secrets Reporters
The official payment records of the Nigeria Stored Products Research Institute contain a figure that appears three times in one day. On 6 September 2023, the institute paid Kolvey Company Limited N220,930,232.55, paid TRCC Nigeria Limited N220,930,232.55 and paid Bumy Global Resources Ltd N220,930,232.55, three separate companies collecting the identical sum, to the last kobo, for solar street lights in Gombe Central Senatorial District in Gombe State.
The three payments sit on consecutive lines of the same payment batch and carry the same described work in three different places. Kolvey Company Limited was paid for the construction and installation of solar street lights in Yamaltu/Deba Local Government Area. TRCC Nigeria Limited was paid for the construction and installation of solar street lights in Akko Local Government Area. Bumy Global Resources Ltd was paid for the construction and installation of solar street lights in what the record describes only as some selected areas of the same senatorial district. Together the three payments moved N662,790,697.65 out of the institute in a single day. No description attached to any of them states the number of street lights installed, the number of poles erected, the streets covered or the price of a single light, and the records examined by SecretsReporters contain no breakdown from which three identical prices for three different scopes of work could be derived. Section 16 of the Public Procurement Act 2007 requires public procurement to be conducted through open competition, in a transparent manner and on terms that deliver value for money, and section 38 of the same Act requires that the records of every procurement be kept in a form that shows how it was conducted.
The figure did not retire after the Gombe payments. On the same day, 6 September 2023, and on a later line of the same payment batch, the institute paid Samema Investment Limited N44,186,046.51 for the construction of solar street lights in Minna, Niger State. N44,186,046.51 is exactly one fifth of N220,930,232.55, neither a kobo more nor a kobo less. On 3 October 2023, Alkaf Global Investment Resources Ltd was paid the identical N44,186,046.51, this time for the supply of computer sets in Adamawa South Senatorial District in Adamawa State. On 5 October 2023, Emunu Concept International Limited was paid the identical N44,186,046.51 for the supply of computer laptops for women and youths in Maiduguri Metropolitan Federal Constituency in Borno State. One template sum and its exact 20 percent slice priced street lights in Gombe State, street lights in Niger State, computer sets in Adamawa State and laptops in Borno State, four unrelated supplies in four states at two figures that divide exactly into one another. The Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 binds every agency of government to prudence and value for money in the management of public resources, and it is against that duty that a single price fixed in Ilorin was applied unchanged to goods and works that share no specification.
The same batches hold two further pairs priced to the kobo. On 6 September 2023, in the same payment run as the Gombe transfers, Tripplehech Resources Ltd and Besserlaw Concept Limited were each paid exactly N38,000,000 for the identical described supply of agricultural inputs and head tilers to farmers in Damboa, Borno State. On 5 October 2023, on consecutive lines of the same batch that carried the Emunu payment, Gwasmal Procurement Nigeria Ltd and Joila Empire Limited were each paid exactly N38,000,000 for the identical described supply of assorted food items for internally displaced persons across Maiduguri Metropolitan. In each pair the descriptions are the same, the dates are the same and the amounts are the same to the final zero.
Two months after the first round, the three Gombe companies returned together. On 9 November 2023, in a single payment batch, the institute paid Kolvey Company Limited N218,168,604.65, Bumy Global Resources Ltd N219,052,325.59 and TRCC Nigeria Limited N219,113,633.72, each for the same Gombe Central street light works described in the September payments. The largest and smallest of the three second payments stand N945,029.07 apart. Across the two batches of September and November 2023, the institute paid the three companies a combined N1,319,125,261.61 for solar street lights in one senatorial district, and the descriptions of the second round, like those of the first, state no quantity of lights and no unit price by which the sums could be tested.
Every payment in this pattern falls in the opening months of one tenure. Professor Lateef Oladimeji Sanni, a professor of food science and technology and a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Development) of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, assumed office as Executive Director of the institute on 1 May 2023, and the Gombe identicals were paid four months later. The institute, based in Ilorin, Kwara State, is a federal research body charged with research into the preservation and storage of agricultural produce, and the Gombe Central street lights were constituency projects executed through it in 2023. The companies in the pattern did not leave its books after 2023. Emunu Concept International Limited received ten payments totalling N1,196,466,713.60 from the institute across the tenure, and Samema Investment Limited returned for payments of N219,130,006.13 on 23 September 2024 and N216,682,790.70 on 17 December 2024, figures that sit in the same neighbourhood as the original Gombe sum.
The payment records prove the amounts, the dates and the descriptions, and they prove them to the kobo. What the records do not contain is any quantity, specification or price build-up capable of explaining how street lights in Yamaltu/Deba, street lights in Akko and street lights in unnamed selected areas each cost exactly N220,930,232.55, or how one fifth of that exact figure then priced computer supplies in two other states. Checks by SecretsReporters on the corporate records of Kolvey Company Limited, TRCC Nigeria Limited, Bumy Global Resources Ltd, Samema Investment Limited, Alkaf Global Investment Resources Ltd and Emunu Concept International Limited were still ongoing at the time of this report.
