Education Minster failed to act on corruption reports – Sacked NABTEB board tells Buhari

Chairman of the dissolved Governing Board of the National Business and Technical Examinations Board, NABTEB, Prof Leonard Shilgba, has alleged that the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, and the Permanent Secretary, Sonny Echono, did not act on corruption investigations done by the board.

Shilgba stated that the NABTEB Board acted in line with its statutory powers and called on President Muhammadu Buhari to look into the matter.

Echono had on Monday announced that President Buhari had dissolved the Governing Board with immediate effect and reinstated the suspended Registrar, Prof Ifeoma Abanihe, and four directors of the board, who were earlier suspended on corruption allegations.

The governing board had suspended Abanihe and others over N49m contracts allegedly unaccounted for.

Responding, Shilgba in a statement on Tuesday, said “The board communicated its actions to the minister for further necessary action via a letter referenced, NABTEB/GB/CH/HME/001, titled: ‘Some Urgent Decisions of the Governing Board of NABTEB.’ I further requested a physical meeting with the minister via an email, dated June 20, 2018, and also by a text as follows:

“Dear honourable minister, greetings, sir. I have sent to your email address certain urgent decisions, which were unanimously taken by the Governing Board of NABTEB at its first regular meeting on June 19, 2018. I seek an appointment with you on Thursday or Friday this week to give you hard copies of the documents cited in my mail to you.’ I flew to Abuja last Thursday and stayed till Saturday without the minister granting me an appointment or responding to my emails or text messages.

“The registrar failed to respond to matters arising from some documents, in a letter referenced NABTEB/GB/CH/QS 001, and dated April 18, 2018, which was also forwarded to both the minister and the Permanent Secretary. The registrar was given another reminder via a letter referenced NABTEB/GB/CH/QS 002.

“In the past three months, the Governing Board met on the ground a situation where NABTEB ran on a deficit, votes for examination monitoring were shared by greedy people, contract sums paid for no job done, contracts inflated, senior NABTEB workers owing millions of naira of unremitted examination registration fees and salaries arbitrarily deducted.”