Role of the Due Process in regard to Contractors is to check that all the
Prices in the Quotation reflects a Fair Market Value and the Due Process
Department then recommends the Prices for Approval, based on the
Quotations received from the Head of Department.
According to him, Contractors are selected based on a Bidding Process, and
before the Contractor would bid, there would be a Public Announcement in
regard to the Purchase, either via Radio or Newspaper, and the Contractors
are paid via Cheque, but he could not say whether they had begun using EPayments.
Further, had there been a Memo, it would have been practically impossible
for the Sum of Money approved by the Governor to find its way into the
Office Drawer of the Commissioner of Finance, who by his virtue of his Office
and the evidence rendered, DOES NOT physical handle Cash or Cheque once
it is disbursed into his Ministry’s Account. His Role simply stopped at giving
Directives and no more!!!
It is logical then to assume that since the Cheque of the Sum of One Hundred
and Sixty-Five Million Naira (N165, 000, 000) did not pass through any
Administrative Channel to find either a Soft or Hard Landing in his Drawer,
nothing and absolutely nothing would hinder the Cheque from being split or
fragmented. The Officials of the Ministry of Finance did the splitting of the
Cheque themselves and not Salman Global Ventures Nigeria Limited as was
with the Case of the Sum of Two Hundred and Fifty Million Naira (N250, 000,
000).
Logically, the existence of a Memo would have been chronicled in a Payment
Voucher and other Ancillary Documents that would mandate the Accountant
General to release the Sum of Two Hundred Million Naira (N200, 000, 000).
It is worthy of note that this Sum was not PRIVATE MONEY since it
emanated from the Accountant General’s Office before it entered into the
Account of the Ministry of Finance with Zenith Bank Plc., and therefore the
ONLY person with the Master Key, was the Defendant. His Approval
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