Peace Institute Paid ₦456 Million With No Supporting Documents, Awarded Contracts to Staff Against Code of Conduct

The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution paid out ₦455,697,836.86 in 2023 under Dr. Joseph Ochogwu, who was the Director-General, without any relevant supporting documents. The documents obtained by NGProbe revealed the largest of twelve findings recorded against the Institute for the financial year.

The twelve findings together total ₦1,072,420,275.00, and on the majority of them, the Institute’s management response is recorded as either unsatisfactory or “No response.”

Among the findings is one that stands apart. ₦51,097,068.00 was paid on a contract formally awarded to a company but which, on the audit’s finding, was facilitated and executed instead by staff of the Institute itself. In effect, the Institute paid an outside company for work its own employees carried out. The audit recommends particular attention to this finding, and it is not difficult to see why. A contract awarded to a company that does not perform the work raises immediate questions about what the company was paid for, and who authorised the arrangement.

₦455,697,836.86 in payments carried no relevant supporting documents. Paragraph 603(i) of the Financial Regulations 2009 requires every voucher to contain full particulars of the service rendered, backed by documents sufficient to allow the payment to be independently checked. That was not done.

A further ₦138,947,700.00 was paid for contracts that were only partially executed, money released for work that was not finished.

₦102,389,362.50 was tied to irregularities in the selection of contractors and the award of contracts. ₦64,236,484.66 involved a contract deliberately split to circumvent the procurement approval threshold, a practice that defeats the purpose of the threshold entirely, since splitting a large contract into smaller ones allows it to escape the scrutiny that larger awards require.

₦73,600,000.00 was deducted as an unauthorised 5% administrative charge. A further ₦8,815,060.00 in 5% administrative charge deductions was misapplied, and ₦2,225,821.45 was double-deducted as an administrative charge on a constituency project. ₦66,500,000.00 was paid for constituency projects executed without authorisation from the Federal Ministry of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs.

₦51,563,781.92 was spent procuring ICT facilities without the mandatory clearance of the National Information Technology Development Agency — the same requirement that applies to every federal agency before any IT procurement. ₦38,646,000.00 in store items were never taken on ledger charge, meaning the Institute cannot account for goods it paid for. And ₦18,701,159.61 in cash balances went unaccounted for.

Dr. Joseph Ochogwu has served as Director-General of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution across the period covered by this review and continues in the role today.

Paragraph 3106 of the Financial Regulations 2009, covering irregular payment, applies broadly across these findings, alongside specific provisions on contract splitting, NITDA clearance, and store ledger accounting.

The Director-General is directed to account for each sum before the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee, recover and remit the amounts to the Treasury, and forward evidence of that remittance, with particular attention to the finding that a contract formally awarded to an outside company was instead carried out by the Institute’s own staff.