Mr Moddibo Tukur, the Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), has been embroiled in serious allegations of questionable procurements and employment schemes since he got the sensitive job.
The NFIU, established in 2004, is Nigeria’s agency in charge of collecting and analyzing disclosures from reporting organizations in order to produce financial intelligence for other agencies combating money laundering, terrorism financing, and other financial crimes.
According to our investigations, Mr Tukur, who should be considered one of the Federal Government’s anti-corruption czars, allegedly oversaw some big financial heists, employment racketeering, and illegal procurements, all of which are in full breach of the Public Procurement Act of 2007 and the Public Service Rules.
Illegal procurements
According to Quest Times investigations, Mr Tukur engages in risky procurements on numerous occasions to “satisfy his personal ego and showmanship.” One of these is his alleged purchase of a million-dollar armored vehicle in 2022, although he currently uses one that is still operational. Due to insufficient monitoring and internal control, the vehicle was alleged to have gone missing in transit and the importation handlers were forced to replace it. The replaced vehicle also went missing in transit, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to suspect Mr Tukur’s agents in the United States of engaging in money laundering. This is because the NFIU’s financial guidelines and procedures outlined in the Public Procurement Act were ignored with impunity, say government officials knowledgeable about the situation.
According to a US source, there is also an allegation Tukur has begun purchasing farm machinery and equipment from the United States via Julius Berger, a construction firm, for his retirement facility in Malabu, Adamawa state. Since 2021, the FBI is said to have alerted the Nigerian government, via the US embassy, of Mr Turkur’s brazen act of money laundering through Julius Berger.
According to Section 16(24) of the Public Procurement Act, “Persons who have been engaged in preparing for a procurement or part of the proceedings thereof may neither bid for the procurement in question or any part thereof either as main contractor or sub-contractor nor may they co-operate in any manner with bidders in the course of preparing their tenders.”
According to a highly placed FG source, the NFIU procured over 60 computer tablets in October 2022, intended for the Crime Records Information Management System (CRIMS) project. But these computer tablets were stolen by a member of Mr Tukur’s family who was employed in the organization under his direct instructions and recommendations.
As it turns out the staff (names withheld) was caught on closed-circuit television (CCTV) recordings but with Tukur’s intervention faced no administrative or disciplinary action. According to another source, the said staff who hails from Adamawa “was in rehab for a long time, to the knowledge of the CEO.”
According to Quest Times’ independent findings, the NFIU chief created a massive employment gap within the organization, where children of some respected individuals who the Director wishes to favour are duly employed in clear violation of the Public Service Rules.
As at now, over half of the staff at the NFIU are just sitting down without any work schedule and some recent employees are not even on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel information System (IPPIS) salary records until recently. But NFIU had just been giving them allowances to avoid perceptions of a scam by their sponsors who the Director is said to be hoping to please. Even some of the recently promoted officers of the Unit could not be paid their full salaries on the new promoted grade level.
Proxy, nepotism and fraudulent employment schemes
According to findings within the organization, Mr Tukur hides his tracks by using bogus private companies and third parties. An NFIU official who does not want his name printed told Quest Times how he uses construction firm Julius Berger for some of his shady dealings. Just as he used PICO MOTORS when he was Head, External Cooperation at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) where he used the company to procure vehicles for the organization. An issue that was being investigated by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) which Mr Tukur managed to scuttle in 2021.
The Quest Times learnt that Mr Tukur has begun a bit by bit purchase of “a consignment of farm machinery and equipment purchased for his retirement farm and currently being packaged for importation into Nigeria through Julius Berger’s building materials importation. Julius Berger has agreed to this agreement, because the Director has promised to award them a contract for building staff houses.”
During one of our undercover visits to the NFIU headquarters, The Quest Times overheard staff complaints about Mr Tukur’s curious Mortgage Housing Project for staff. According to one of the employees who spoke to Quest Times, the director has made the project mandatory for all employees in order to “reward Julius Berger, the project’s contractor.”
We dug deeper to learn more about Julius Berger and Mr Tukur’s relationship. Our findings were eye-opening: Mr Tukur ensured Julius Berger received a contract to build the NFIU’s new office in violation of the Procurement Act on the condition that the latter build him a luxury retirement home “of his preferred quality and taste.”
The proposed mortgage scheme was “originally for staff to buy a carcass structure at the range of N40 and N50 million until Tukur sent an email recently informing the staff that the prices had gone up to the range of N60 and N90 million,” a staff member in the Director’s office told Quest Times.
“Intriguingly, the time to build the houses has now been drastically reduced to 9 months instead of the original 18 months,” the apparently enraged staff stated.
According to agency sources, the Director has also launched a massive campaign among staff, including indiscriminate promotion inducement of Level 8 officers, to ensure that they sign up for the mortgage scheme. According to one of our sources, the majority of these employees were hired within the last year. “This man runs a government agency with such impunity, doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He’s running the Unit like it’s his personal business,” a former employee said.
To back up our source’s claim that Mr Tukur runs NFIU as his “personal private business,” Quest Times obtained a copy of an email sent by Mr Tukur regarding the opening of a barbershop on the NFIU premises. The email stated (in part): “In order to assist members of staff who work longer man-hours and overtime, the Unit introduced skeletal medical and social sanitary support. It started with barber’s shop while a ladies’ salon, male, and female pedicures, a shoe shining, and medical dispensary nursing will follow immediately.”
Buhari’s cabal connections and impunity
Findings within the organization showed that Mr Tukur uses his connection to key powerbrokers and cabals in the President Muhammadu Buhari administration as a shield for his alleged corrupt deeds.
“It has gotten so bad to the point that some junior staff are assigned official cars while their seniors are relegated to the background all because the CEO has preferences based on his whims and caprices,” a source told Quest Times.