Abuja suspends payment to MDA contractors to plug loopholes
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Abuja has suspended payment to federal contractors and other service providers across all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to plug loopholes for fraud.
Presidency sources confirmed the directive was given from the “highest level” for two reasons.
The first is to properly check last-minute payments authorised when former President Muhammadu Buhari was bowing out of office with his team.
The second reason is due to problems with the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS).
It was learnt some Buhari’s officials authorised arbitrary payments to themselves and their cronies as they were leaving office, which raised concerns among civil servants.
A former Minister who was involved in a controversial project at the twilight of the Buhari administration reportedly approved N2 billion for the logo of project.
The payment was considered very outrageous by those familiar with the project but they could not stop the former Minister, who was said to often brag about his closeness to the then powers that be in the Villa.
Similar payments were being processed before the new directive to stop all payments from the GIFMIS, the federal government public finance management solution.
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Other sources said the GIFMIS platform was malfunctioning with duplicated payments on single transactions in some cases, which could lead a beneficiary account being paid twice or more for one transaction, per reporting by Vanguard.
On the other hand, a payment could be made on the platform without the beneficiary getting to receive it.
So, top officials of the Ministry of Finance took a decision, with the approval of the Presidency, to stop all payments until GIFMIS is fixed.
Because of the importance of GIFMIS in the operations of the federal government, officials of the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation who man the platform and the consultants were ordered to solve the problem latest next this week.
