The Federal House of Representatives on Friday constituted an ad hoc committee to investigate the alleged theft of over N2.1bn from the vault of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC) from the newly printed N1,000 notes in the course of production.
The motion, sponsored by Albert Sam-Tsokwa and 57 others, expressed concern over recurring cases of missing currency in the company. Sam-Tsokwa maintained that the alleged disappearance of large sums of money in the course of production was due to security breaches, as admitted by the management of the company. He noted that CBN owns 77 per cent shares, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) 20.6 per cent shares while De Rue of United Kingdom (UK) owns 2.94 per cent of the company.
The lawmakers called for investigation into the development, stressing that the company — which was founded in 1963 with the mandate of supplying security printed materials to government, various ministries department and agencies (MDAs), the Central Bank and other institutions such as printing of bank notes, coins, bank cheque, postal stamp, treasury bills, passport, vouchers, tickets, customs and immigration documents — cannot afford thefts of this magnitudes. “What is more worrisome is the conflicting information on the actual amount of money declared missing,” he said, noting that “while the CBN governor said it was N2bn, the managing director of the company claimed that the missing amount was N1.5m, and the media adviser to the managing director claimed that the actual amount was N900,000 and that a security operative was arrested in Lagos with the sum of N900,000.”
He added that about 39 workers of the company were summarily sacked from the establishment after news of the theft came to the public knowledge.
“What is more important here is that a security outfit was in security breach; and that we cannot allow,” he insisted. The ad-hoc committee is to report to the House within four weeks.
