This is a detailed summary of a report by the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF) Interim Management Committee set up on July 7, 1999 by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The report summarized that PTF under Buhari's supervision was grossly mismanaged to the tune of N25.7Billion. This blog in no way intends to witchunt Buhari as he may or may not have been a direct beneficiary of the fraud, rather the main culprits are consultants whom he appointed to run affairs in the trust fund. Read on...

Background
The PTF was set up by the Sani Abacha administration in March 1995 with General Muhammadu Buhari (Rtd) appointed to head the Fund which was formed sequel to the increase in the pump price of petrol to N 11 from N 3.25. General Abacha had said then that the Fund was to distribute the gain from the increased price on social and infrastructural projects. The Trust Fund started work with an initial capital of about N60billion in 1996 with a mandate that included the rehabilitation of roads and waterways, educational and health institutions, providing textbooks and stationery, procuring essential drugs and vaccines, providing water supply systems, reviving crumbling agricultural sectors, connecting outlying areas to the national electricity grid, extending railways and telecommunications and ensuring consistent food supply.

On assumption of office in 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo disbanded the PTF. One of the discoveries made by the administration was that between its inception and July, 1999, the funds that accrued to the PTF stood at N 181 billion. It was also muted that the Consultants appointed by the Executive Chairman of the Trust Fund, Gen Buhari constantly fleeced the country of funds running into billions. In 2000, the Obasanjo administration set up an Interim Management Committee (IMC) to take a look into the affairs of the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund and ascertain among other things, how much has been spent by the PTF so far, especially payments made from inception to September 30, 1999, and what is on ground to justify the huge expenditure. The Committee the set to work and accomplished all the terms of reference by March 2000. For reasons best known to him, Obasanjo failed to act on the report findings. The Interim Management Committee (IMC) members were: Dr. Haroun Adam (Chairman), and Alhaji Abdu Abdurrahim, Mr Achana Gaius Yaro, Edward Eguavoen, Mr. T. Andrew Adegboro and Mr. Baba Goni Machina as members. A summary of their report is given in the next paragraph.

Terms Of Reference
One of the terms of reference of their appointment was to carry out verification exercise on ALL projects and programmes prior to packaging the projects and programmes for subsequent transfer to the appropriate line ministries. The recoverable exercises of the under-listed projects were completed and the various reports and the IMC recommendations forwarded to President Obasanjo for further directives. In all there were seven terms of references and they covered areas such as: PTF consultants, Fund recoveries from financial institutions, Food Supply, Education, Health, Water Supply,e.t.c.

Discoveries
For the sake of clarity I shall outline the findings of the report according to projects undertaken.

1. Afriproject Consortium (APC)
AFPRI- Project Consortium (APC) Afri-Project Consortium were contracted by PTF as Management Consultants and Project Consultants. The Executive Chairman of PTF also delegated to them "the power of Engineer (sic) in all appropriate project requiring such power." Inotherwords Buhari gave them a blank cheque and total freedom to do as they pleased. Afriproject Consortium then assumed an absolute power of initiation, approval and execution of all projects. Three reputable management consulting firms were engaged by the IMC to verify all payments made to AfriProject from the inception of PTF up to 30th September, 1999. After the audit verification it was discovered that they have over charged PTF for their services to the tune of N2,057,550,062 (Two billion fifty seven million five hundred and fifty thousand and sixty two Naira only).

2. PTF-Assisted HIV/AIDS Programmes
The intervention of PTF in the HIV/AIDS was flawed due to professional negligence by the management consultants, AfriProject. There was an excessive order of HIV/AIDS kits which resulted in most of the kits expiring before use. Also there was gross inflation of the purchase price. These two factors combined resulted in a loss of N579,000,000 (Five hundred and seventy nine million Naira only).

(Read the rest of the article here: http://ndibenonso..com/2015/01/obasanjos-1999-imc-report-that-exposed.html)