In the weeds: How top official got tangled in Nigerian aid scandal

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In the weeds: How top official got tangled in Nigerian aid scandal

WACHAKAL, Nigeria – When millions of people in northeast Nigeria faced hunger and attacks by Islamist militant group Boko Haram in March 2016, the government acted: it decided to spend $1.4 million cutting down weeds around the village of Wachakal in order to stop flooding.

Six months later, many of the weeds had grown back and 317 million naira (at the time $F1.78m) had been transferred from the company hired to destroy them to a firm founded by the government official in charge of dispensing aid, according to a Nigerian Senate report. The report, written by a committee of lawmakers from Nigeria’s upper chamber of parliament, concluded that companies that received contracts for projects including the weeding from a government body overseen by the official, Babachir Lawal, transferred a total of 500 million naira (worth around $F2.81m) to the firm he set up.

The report publicly called for a criminal investigation into the payments. Central to the probe was whether Mr Lawal was involved in a suspected kickback scheme to divert aid money intended for the volatile northeast.

The committee said the scheme involved inflating the value of contracts to enrich Mr Lawal and his associates. The report did not provide evidence to show why it believed costs had been enlarged.

Mr Lawal, 62, is an ally of President Muhammadu Buhari and one of his first appointments. In a written statement responding to Reuters’ questions, Mr Lawal denied wrongdoing and said he had been the victim of a Senate witch-hunt.

The United Nations has warned that northeast Nigeria is gripped by one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Boko Haram has burned down homes, destroyed livelihoods and killed thousands of people. Refugees living in camps complain of starvation and disease, while soldiers and police have been accused of rape.