Minister refutes N2bn bribery scandal

The Minister of Agricul­ture and Rural devel­opment, Chief Audu Ogbeh has refuted allegation making the rounds that he and some ministry officials removed N2 billion from the N20 billion paid to agro deal­ers who participated in the 2014 Growth Enhancement Support Programme (GES).

The minister, while briefing journalists in Abuja Thursday expressed shock over the al­legation made by an online media maintaining that the money was handled by the Ministry of Finance and dis­bursed to the agro dealers by the Accountant General of the Federation.

He explained that the al­legation stated that “the min­istry paid N13 billion out of the N20 billion released for the agro dealers, and that he, the Minister of State and Per­manent Secretary shared N2 billion.”

Ogbeh, however, pointed out that the debt of N37 bil­lion was inherited from the previous administration, and because of the complaints by agro dealers of not oper­ating because they did not have money to carry on with their business, “the Federal Government was gracious enough to pay N20 billion of a total of N67 billion out of which N37 billion belonged to the agro dealers.

”We met with the Minis­try of finance where it was agreed that the big agro deal­ers and fertilizer manufactur­ers would be paid before the small agro dealers,” he stated.

Chief Ogbeh expressed worry at the culture of irre­sponsibility and blatant crim­inality carried on by the social media.

He said: “I don’t need N2 billion at this stage of my life, I will not take public funds, am not here because am looking for a job, I said it before the Senate. This criminality in the name of social media that people will hide under the platform, they won’t revealed their names, if you have con­crete evidence that somebody has done wrong say so and be prepared to go to court and the police to report.”