•Over funds for prison renovation, medical supplies, housing scheme
Paramilitary officers want President Muhammadu Buhari to beam his searchlight beyond the Finance Ministry to include the Interior Ministry under Abba Moro’s ministerial stint of four years during the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
A group of officers under the aegis of Paramilitary Officers Forum said if Buhari is sincere about his change slogan, Moro’s activities must be accounted for.
The officers, who do not want their names in print because it is against public service rule, alleged in a petition that the best way to change Nigeria is to demonstrate that certain conduct is not acceptable.
The officers represent the four paramilitary departments in the Interior Ministry – Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Fire Service, Nigeria Prisons Service (NPS) and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).
They accused Moro of inflicting incalculable damage to Nigeria’s internal security infrastructure in the four years he was Minister, and unless Buhari shows that Moro got it wrong, the president cannot be seen as sincere.
They urged the government to probe the Immigration job tragedy last year which claimed the lives of 23 Nigerians across the country.
“If the real story of that scam is made public, Nigerians will see that Moro was not only corrupt, but heartless,” the officers said.
In fact, one of the officers described Moro as callous and his reign as “the darkest moment in the history of Nigeria’s Interior Ministry.”
They accused Moro of collecting so much money from them for the paramilitary housing scheme, which later became an abandoned project with contributors’ money not refunded.
They accused him of populating the four paramilitary services with his Idoma tribesmen.
TheNiche had on September 7, 2014 reported discontent among officers in the Interior Ministry over recruitment tilted in favour of Idomas.
“Go to the Ministry of Interior and you will think you are in an Idoma village. This is the result of so many middle aged Idoma villagers employed by Moro and dumped in the ministry doing nothing, at the expense of younger and able-bodied Nigerians looking for work,” a source had said at the time.
“Junior officers from his tribe were not only promoted over their superiors but were posted to choice stations in all the services.
“He promoted a controller of fire to controller general. The only qualification the man had was that he was Idoma,” the source alleged.
The petitioners accused Moro of collecting N240 million to complete Koton Karfe Prison, which he never did, and never accounted for the money.
The prison was said to have been commissioned by Moro even when he knew that no work had been done at the place.
“For the four years Moro was there,” they alleged, “all the contracts for the supply of drugs to prisoners were collected by him. He was paid but he did not supply one tablet of Panadol.”
Efforts to get Moro’s reaction were not successful. George Udoh, his Chief Press Secretary when he was Minister, declined to speak for him.
TheNiche later got Moro’s phone number, but he did not respond to several calls. He also did not reply to a text message.