By Omowumi Omotosho
The trial of the former governor of Kwara State, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, and his former Commissioner for Finance, Mr. Demola Banu, over the alleged diversion of the State Universal Basic Education Fund (SUBEB) suffered a setback on Tuesday as The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) witness, Abubakar Hassan exonorated the duo from the alleged illegal withdrawal of state’s counterpart fund.
Mr. Hassan, an Assistant Director of Finance at the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Abuja, stated that “the duo were not signatories to the SUBEB account and therefore cannot be held liable for the missing funds.”
The Ilorin Zonal Directorate of the EFCC had dragged the duo before an Ilorin, Kwara State High Court, accusing them of misappropriating UBEC’s matching grants totaling N5.78 billion between 2013 and 2019. Both defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges.
However, at the resumed hearing of the case on Tuesday, EFCC’s witness, Mr. Hassan, testified during cross-examination, said that “SUBEB is an autonomous agency with a separate board, headed by an executive chairman.”
Counsels for the former governor and ex-commissioner, Kamaldeen Ajibade (SAN) and Gboyega Oyewole (SAN), respectively cross-examined the witness.
Mr. Hassan further explained that “State SUBEBs have distinct and separate accounts from the state government’s.”
He clarified that ex-governor Ahmed was not a member of SUBEB, nor was he a signatory to the account. He added that UBEC typically pays matching grants to the state SUBEB accounts.
He further emphasized that “UBEC receives education action plans from states, approves them, and submits them to the SUBEB board. SUBEB is an independent agency under the UBEC Act, and the state government is not involved in the payment process.”
Regarding the retrieval of matching grants, Hassan revealed that through a letter to SUBEB’s banks, UBEC had recovered over N1.8 billion meant for the 2013 and 2014 grants because the Board had illegally withdrawn its counterpart fund from the project.
In a previous hearing on Monday, while being led by EFCC counsel Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), Hassan testified that 51 projects approved under the 2013 action plan were abandoned due to lack of funds. According to Hassan, the UBEC project monitoring committee discovered that, despite the approval of these projects, SUBEB had later withdrawn its counterpart funds, which hindered the implementation of the action plan.
“The project monitoring team found that many projects were either unexecuted or abandoned. We wrote to then-Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed in May 2018 to address these issues, but we received no response,” Hassan alleged. He further stated that the abandoned projects spanned all 16 local government areas of Kwara State.
Hassan also addressed the illegal withdrawal of N1,829,054,054.06 from the 2014 and 2015 State Counterpart Funds, which had qualified the state for access to the Federal Government’s UBEC Matching Grants.
Presiding Judge Mahmud adjourned the case to March 12 and 13 for the continuation of the trial.
