A Minister of Finance-ordered ongoing probe, has uncovered a massive fraud in the Federal Government’s Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria programme.
The Point gathered from a reliable source in the Ministry of Finance that investigators commissioned by the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, had already discovered that some senior civil servants gave out or facilitated slots worth between N7 million and N10 million each to their spouses, children and friends.
The source added that some of the beneficiaries, would ordinarily have qualified for the grants if they had not been aided by their ‘connections’within and outside the ministry.
The Jonathan administration had conceived the YouWin scheme to help youth entrepreneurs grow existing businesses and create employment.
Insisting that the probe had not been concluded, the source added that findings by the investigators were so mind-boggling that the minister had decided to restructure the entire programme.
The source said, “The fraud uncovered in the programme made the minister to restructure the programme and turn its focus into enterprise education.”
“Actually, allegations were persistent that there was racketeering. Some of the applicants, especially those who lost out, claimed that some of the winners simply copied and pasted the plans of other applicants in order to win. Some of them also said they were asked by some civil servants to use specific consultants in order to be considered.
“Contrary to the rules of the game, awards were also given to some entrepreneurs that were operating outside Nigeria. In fact, some of these people simply took the cash and migrated to foreign countries.”
It was also discovered in the course of investigation that the ministry, under Jonathan, awarded a “disproportionate” number of awards to people from a particular part of the country.
The source said, “Some of the members of the team used it to set up friends and family as awardees. In one case, a husband and his wife used the same address and pocketed N10 million each. In another instance, a son of one of the directors in the ministry was given N10 million.
“When the (current) administration got into power, one of the first things that the ministry did was to ask for the BVN of awardees. It was an attempt to find out if some of the awardees got more than a single slot and whether senior civil servants awarded slots to their family members.”
It was learnt that the BVN verification, which exposed the fraud in the programme and initiated the probe, might lead to the indictment of some senior civil servants.
