Former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development Sadiya Umar Farouq who served under President Muhammadu Buhari has gone underground refusing to answer questions of the alleged N37 billion fraud under her watch.

Farouq was appointed pioneer minister of the new ministry which claimed it shared billions of naira to vulnerable Nigeria under questionable circumstances.

The ministry was created as a strategic office to facilitate the social security programme of the Buhari government. However, for much of Farouq’s tenure, the operations of the ministry were shrouded in secrecy and opacity eliciting criticisms from a section of Nigerians.

But recently, the Bola Tinubu government beamed its anti-corruption radar towards the ministry. Preliminary investigations point to a hail of financial heist which anti-crime agencies have been scrutinising to ascertain culpability of individuals both in the ministry and in the Buhari Presidency.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), had invited Farooq to answer to certain posers and puzzle discovered in the ledger of the ministry but she has shunned the invitation, apologising for failing to appear before the commission. A source familiar with the ongoing probe of the activities of the ministry especially the operations of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA) told Political Economist NG that no matter what EFCC and any other agency may discover, “they should know that Farooq did not act alone.”

She claimed she was indisposed at the moment.

However, one of the suspects in the alleged fraud within the ministry especially the welfarist agency under it, Halima Shehu, the suspended National Coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA) has reported to the EFCC and is undergoing what a source called ‘routine interrogation.’