The Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) is embroiled in a whirlpool of corruption as facts have emerged as to how the current Managing Director, Ibrahim Abdusalam and his predecessor, Mr. Nnamdi Udoh, both single-handedly signed off payments of over N3 billion on questionable contracts between 2013 and 2015.

Documents obtained by ORDERPAPER.NG showed that the bulk of these payments were for clearing of containers and customs duties which amounted to N2,101,689,304.14 within the period in review.

Most of these clearing/customs duties payments were handled by particular companies which kept recurring over and over indicating what sources familiar with inside dealings in NAMA called ‘ínsider trading’ as the companies “were either owned or promoted by top management staff involved in the dirty deals.”

Sources also told ORDERPAPER.NG that claims of clearing/customs duty payments were dubious as the agency had never really undertaken any “major importation that warrants payments in tens of millions of naira at different times as claimed by the management.”

To further show how questionable some of the payments were, the trail of approvals and payments revealed a lack of due process and transparency in approving the sums involved which in most cases were above the approval limits of the MD of NAMA and should have either been referred to the Board or the Minister of Aviation as the case may be.

An example was a request for payment by Delosa Limited of N39,650,000.00 for ‘cost of customs clearing and haulage of 10x40FT ZIMU1169653, ZIMU4029722, ZCSU2985348, GSLU2025405, TRLU9623242, CLHU6934293, FSCU8774624, TGHU4687174, ZCSU2596026 AND EMCU5201729 STC WIRE MANAGERS SCALE ELECTRONICS’ addressed to the MD in a letter dated October 6, 2014.

Of the total amount in the letter, N25,941,750 was submitted as payment for duty while the balance of N13,708,250 was for agency fee.

ORDERPAPER.NG investigations showed that the letter was received in the office of the MD on October 8, 2014 and was approved and minuted directly by Abdusalam to the Director of Finance and Administration on October 9, 2014 who in turn minuted it to General Manager (Finance) same day. By that same day, payment process had been concluded without any trail of the letter going through other key departments like legal and audit for authentication and confirmation of the contract as stipulated by public service rules guiding NAMA.

Incidentally, investigations by ORDERPAPER.NG revealed that Delosa, among other companies being cross-checked by our reporters, received several hundreds of millions of payments in similar questionable jobs undertaken for NAMA.

In another shocking discovery, of the N3,147,866,524.14 paid out by the different chief executives of the agency, the sum of N748, 139,386 was expended as ‘expenses made through special officers as mandated to the banks’ while another N298,037,834 was spent on ‘overseas travels’ through a particular travel agency said to belong to a top official of the agency.

While details of direct payments to bank accounts of staff members of NAMA showed a breach of civil service rules, majority of staff in the agency have severely complained of lack of adequate overseas training confirming leads that most of the payments under the two sub-heads above were mere conduit pipes for the MD and his cronies.

Attempts by ORDERPAPER.NG to reach Abdusalam and his predecessor were unsuccessful while no top management official was available for comments on this story.

Abdusalam was appointed MD/Chief Executive of NAMA in March 2014 and served as General Manager, Procurement in the organization before his appointment over and above his seniors. He succeeded Mr. Udoh who was sacked from office on March 4, 2014. NAMA is a parastatal under the ministry of aviation.