PREVIEW
The Anti-Corruption Commission has opened an investigation into Africa Confidential’s report on the failed campus project as public anger grows
Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) announced on 27 August that ‘after a careful review of’ Africa Confidential’s special report on how the University of Sierra Leone (USL) lost $4.5 million to Nigeria’s Femab Properties in obscure dealings, it has ‘commenced a forensic examination of allegations of corruption’.
MPs from both main parties expressed their anger and disappointment at the failure of the Bureh Town project and told Africa Confidential they were determined to get answers to the questions raised in our report (AC Vol 65 No 17, Freetown’s business school buys $4.5m hole in the bush).
Neither the government nor Femab have accounted for how the money was spent, nor why red flags about Femab’s dubious past were ignored. Neither has any official explained how the project could be approved, although no government guarantee of the investment could be made.
Femab insisted to local media that the project to build a new campus at Bureh Town was ‘still on’, but could provide no details of any plans, schedules, visualisations or finance. To many local media the affair has been interpreted as evidence of widespread corruption.
‘This debacle… underscores the lack of accountability at the highest levels of government and the alarming ineffectiveness of the Anti-Corruption Commission,’ read an editorial in Sierra Leone’s leading Sierraeye Magazine, adding that the scandal exposed Sierra Leone’s corruption crisis.
‘We’re all disappointed… It’s a great loss, a huge sum of money in a fledgling economy like Sierra Leone where people don’t even have what to eat,’ said Abdul Kargbo, parliamentary leader of the opposition All People’s Congress (APC), who originally voiced support for the project when it was tabled in parliament in 2019 and passed unanimously.
‘Deceived’
Kargbo said parliament was ‘totally misinformed’ and ‘deceived’ by ‘the government officials who took the project to parliament.’ Francis Amara Kaisamba, an MP from the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and member of the parliamentary Committee on Higher and Technical Education said, ‘We’re very bitter about the outcome… and call on the ACC to do everything to ensure this money is brought back.’ Kaisamba also spoke in favour of the agreement between the USL’s Institute of Public Administration and Management (IPAM) and Femab in parliament.
Meanwhile, Femab issued its own rebuttal of the report to several local newspapers for reprinting but not to Africa Confidential. Calling Africa Confidential an ‘online rag’ and one of the report’s writers a ‘paid operative’, the company claimed ‘the project will resume very soon’.
Femab said the $4.5m from IPAM was invested in the site preparation, consulting services, foreign delegation visits, architectural designs and procurement of ‘tonnes of cement’ and ‘mountains of sand and granite’.
No names and dates were provided, however, only photos of some cement bags and concrete blocks, none of which were present when Africa Confidential visited the Bureh Town site earlier this year. Femab did not specify how much of the materials were procured, their cost and where they ended up.
Despite claiming, ‘all Architectural, Engineering and Electrical Designs have been properly scrutinized and approved’, Femab did not provide any visualisation of the project. Femab’s statement tries to distance the company from the manipulators of stock prices on the United States and Nigeria stock exchanges, Milost Global, but does not deny its association with it, only that Milost ‘was far from what it portrayed itself to be’.
Femab did not state this beforehand. In December 2017, several months after Milost announced its intention to pour $500m in capital into Femab, Femab’s CEO Abiodun Aguda publicly confirmed receiving an initial $10m. In June 2018, Williamsville Sears, a division of Milost, announced a complete takeover of Femab, which was again confirmed by Aguda, who rejoiced about the deal. Femab has not commented on this in its latest statements.
As late as June 2019, IPAM believed its Nigerian partners had access to the $500m capital, according to a Ministry of Tertiary and Higher Education memo we have seen. In the wake of Femab’s statement Africa Confidential asked IPAM’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Miriam Conteh-Morgan, for clarification of IPAM’s relations with Femab and how the Bureh Town project would be implemented, but received no reply.
Ex-Chief Minister David Francis said in our first report that IPAM administrators told him the project is still alive and finance is being procured, but no details have been provided of financiers, or even outlines of the size and shape of the Bureh Town development.
Africa Confidential also asked the Ministry of Finance in Freetown, the Deputy Minister of Finance in 2019, Patricia Laverley, Francis, and other Sierra Leonean officials and academics how Femab could have passed due diligence checks and why they continued to champion the agreement despite the warnings of the Finance Ministry Permanent Secretary Sahr Jusu. None have answered.
Kargbo said the APC would bring up the issue in the parliament to press the government for answers. ‘We will continue to raise our voices so that the investigation is done and those who are to be held accountable are held accountable,’ he said.
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