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  • 2026: Rethinking pensions, credit, and housing for citizens

    2026: Rethinking pensions, credit, and housing for citizens

    • By Chibundum Chioma Udeh

    As Nigeria enters a new year, fixing the housing crisis requires unblocking long-term savings, rethinking credit, and aligning monetary policy with how ordinary citizens live, work, and build.

    Nigeria’s housing crisis sits at the intersection of rising construction costs, inaccessible pension savings, and prohibitively expensive credit. For millions of working Nigerians, this combination has quietly turned the dream of home-ownership into a distant and often unattainable goal.

    Across the country, many citizens are formally employed and consistently contribute to pension accounts. Their aspirations are modest: to build or buy a small home before retirement. Yet these long-term savings remain locked away throughout their working lives. When contributors turn to credit as an alternative, they encounter interest rates so high that borrowing becomes financially destructive rather than empowering.

    This contradiction lies at the heart of Nigeria’s housing failure. People hold long-term savings but cannot deploy them for long-term needs such as housing, while the credit available to them is short-term, expensive, and poorly suited for incremental home construction or small business growth.

    Microfinance banks illustrate this challenge clearly. Loans are often advertised at rates of about 3.87 percent per month, a figure that may appear manageable at first glance. In reality, such a rate compounds to roughly 46 percent annually and close to 93 percent over two years, excluding administrative fees and other charges. A borrower who takes N10 million could repay nearly N20 million within 24 months.

    For small businesses, these terms are equally crippling. Many rely on loans for working capital, yet interest obligations consume profits before sales even stabilise. As a result, businesses shrink instead of grow, employment opportunities decline, and local production remains weak. The effects ripple through the economy, reduced productivity, rising unemployment, and increased social pressure.

    Read Also: FG did not give Makinde N50bn, only N30bn was released – Aide

    Housing finance faces similar structural barriers. The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) often encourages prospective homeowners to purchase completed properties before accessing mortgage financing. This model excludes most Nigerians, who typically build gradually as income allows. Completed homes are expensive, and mortgage availability remains constrained by the limited long-term funding available to banks. Without patient capital, affordable mortgages remain scarce.

    The pension system, which should ideally help bridge this gap, offers little relief. Although Nigeria’s contributory pension scheme permits contributors to use part of their pension as equity for mortgages, the process is bureaucratic, opaque, and difficult to access. Multiple layers of gatekeeping discourage participation, leaving pension savings effectively untouchable until retirement even though securing housing is one of the primary reasons people save.

    The consequences are far-reaching. First, current financial and housing policies push home-ownership beyond the reach of ordinary Nigerians. Most people build slowly, stage by stage. Short-term loans with monthly compounding interest are fundamentally incompatible with this reality. Unsurprisingly, buildings remain unfinished for years or are abandoned entirely.

    Second, high-cost credit discourages investment and job creation. Small and medium-sized enterprises struggle to survive under such conditions. Rather than expanding and hiring, businesses cut costs or close altogether, worsening unemployment and social instability.

    Third, families become trapped in a cycle of vulnerability. They cannot access affordable loans, cannot use their pension savings productively, cannot purchase completed homes, and cannot wait until retirement to secure shelter. Housing insecurity thus reinforces long-term poverty.

    Nigeria’s monetary framework compounds these challenges. The Central Bank of Nigeria’s Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) currently around 27 percent sets a benchmark that commercial and microfinance banks must exceed. While intended to manage inflation and exchange-rate pressures, this approach has the unintended effect of pricing long-term credit far beyond the reach of households and productive enterprises. In an economy where inflation is largely driven by structural and cost factors, such as insecurity, import dependence, and weak local production, high interest rates alone cannot resolve the problem.

    Importantly, expanding long-term credit does not require abandoning monetary discipline. The Central Bank of Nigeria can expand long-term credit without undermining its core mandate by using the MPR more flexibly and deploying targeted instruments alongside it. While the MPR can remain the anchor for short-term liquidity and inflation control, the CBN can introduce differentiated long-term refinancing windows for housing, MSMEs, and other productive sectors, priced below the headline rate and supported by strict eligibility and monitoring. Channelled through mortgage banks, development finance institutions, and the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company, such facilities would allow long-tenor lending to coexist with a tight monetary stance, ensuring that inflation control does not come at the expense of housing supply, enterprise growth, and financial inclusion.

    Other countries demonstrate that better systems are possible. In the United States, long-term mortgage markets allow households to borrow for 15 to 30 years at relatively stable rates, supported by deep capital markets. Workers may also access regulated loans from retirement accounts for housing, under safeguards that protect future income. South Africa uses pension-backed housing guarantees, where pension assets serve as security rather than direct withdrawals, reducing lender risk and lowering interest rates. The United Kingdom combines fixed-rate mortgages with targeted savings schemes to support first-time buyers.

    These models share a common principle: citizens are not left stranded between locked-up savings and punitive credit. Instead, systems are designed to connect long-term savings with long-term housing needs.

    As a way forward, Nigeria must simplify and expand the pension-to-mortgage framework (with clear timelines for application handling, openness, transparency and equity) so workers saving over decades can use a regulated portion of their pension to secure housing earlier in life with more ease. This is not about draining retirement accounts, but about designing transparent, ease and safe mechanisms that lower borrowing costs.

    The country also needs deeper pools of long-term mortgage finance. Institutions such as the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company and the Federal Mortgage Bank must be strengthened to provide stable capital that allows primary mortgage banks to offer longer tenors at affordable rates, and a more simplified and verifiable process. This must come with strict accountability and open reporting systems and requirements.

    Finally, greater transparency is needed in lending. Borrowers deserve clear disclosure of the real annual cost of loans. Housing policy must also reflect lived realities through incremental housing schemes, serviced plots, and well-structured public-private partnerships.

    As Nigeria steps into a new year, the housing crisis should no longer be treated as an inevitable burden or a distant policy concern. It is a daily reality visible in half-completed buildings, in families struggling to balance rent with school fees, and in workers who save faithfully yet cannot translate those savings into security and dignity.

    A system that locks away people’s long-term savings while pushing them toward crippling short-term loans and unregulated increase in rent is not sustainable especially if the government is not doing much to open and expand the building construction market to allow more supply and lower cost of materials. But it is also not irreversible. With deliberate reforms linking pensions to housing more effectively, expanding long-term credit through targeted monetary instruments, and aligning housing policy with how Nigerians actually live and build the country can begin to turn aspiration into access.

    The new year offers Nigeria a choice: to maintain a system that quietly excludes the majority, or to build one that allows ordinary citizens to save, borrow, and build with confidence. Housing should not be a privilege reserved for the few; it should be part of the promise of work, contribution, and citizenship.

    If Nigeria is serious about shared prosperity, stability, and hope, then unblocking the path between the savings Nigerians already have and the homes they are trying to build would be a fitting place to begin.

    •Chibundum Chioma Udeh is a Project Officer at Saabi Findings Impact Consulting.

  • Group claims credit for ban of Falz’s song

    An Islamic group; the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), says it is behind the ban of ‘This Is Nigeria’, a popular song by Folarin Falana, aka Falz the Bahd Guy.

    The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) on August 6, August 2018, announced its ban of the song in a letter signed by its Zonal Director, Igomu Onoja.

    According to NBC, a part of the song – “This is Nigeria; look how we living now everybody be criminal” has been tagged “vulgar” and the song is now declared “unfit for radio.”

    MURIC, which had had a long battle with the musician since the song was released is happy with NBC’s verdict, claiming the NBC had reacting based on petition it wrote to the agency.

    The Muslim group had long given Falz a deadline to remove the video of ‘This is Nigeria’ from the airwaves, a warning which the singer had rebuffed.

    They claimed that some scenes in the video are “offensive” as they tend to ridicule their religion.

    Falz on the other hand felt their allegation was baseless as the girls in hijab dancing ‘Shaku Shaku’ in the video represents how entertainment is a distraction from everything that is happening in the society.

    Claiming responsibility for the eventual ban, the group in a statement by its director Ishaq Akintola, said: “We asked Falz to withdraw the video or we would sue him. Instead of showing remorse he dared us. We knew he could delay the court case for years because he is a lawyer and he would use every trick in the books to frustrate us. That was why he was boasting.

    “Therefore, instead of going to court, we decided to ambush him by sending a petition to the video board. This week, the NBC banned the video and others like it.

    “He should be the one to go to court now if he likes. Let him go and show how brilliant he is in court.

    “He and his fans laughed at us when we complained about his provocative and vulgar video. But there is no doubt that he who laughs last laughs best. It is hoped that Nigerian artistes will borrow a leaf from this episode.”

    The group used Fela Kuti’s activism as a point of reference, saying “Fela Anikulapo Kuti used his songs to fight military dictatorship and other ills in the Nigerian society, but he never attacked Muslims or Christians.

    “Neither did he incite Nigerians against any ethnic group. He criticised religious groups but never in a vulgar manner and he never exposed Muslims or Christians to ridicule.”

  • Credit, discredit and accreditation

    An oriental wisdom suggests that while the dead lie in state, the living, if need be, would be made to lie in a state. This, Hardball would translate to mean that the same delicate art of managing a cadaver could be applied in managing walking body. Or put differently again, just because a body is up and about does not mean that it is in a proper state of mind; it may well be lying in state – vertically!

    Now why is Hardball in a morbid mode in this season of goodwill? Well, a story broke over the weekend that medical students of the University of Abuja had to spend 12 years to graduate instead of six years! And it is not because they are particularly dull-heads that needed a minimum of two years to achieve an academic year.

    No! It was actually for no fault of the students who were actually rendered prostrate by the state. It just happens that the Federal Government that owns the institution through the instrumentality of the Federal Ministry of Education must have been in a certain awkward state while this aberration persisted. Or if you prefer, government and the university administration may have been lying in state (or lying about its state) for 12 years while all this lasted.

    This is exactly Hardball’s sentiments which also inform this hoary morbidity in a time of Yuletide. And there is no credit in the explanation that the institution was broiled in accreditation matters. Again that discredits both government and institution in equal measure.

    Why would a federal tertiary institution for that matter lack the necessary prerequisite for the statutory accreditation of its courses? And why would a university admit students into departments and faculties not properly accredited by the requisite accrediting authorities? Why would government and school management watch students suffer for so long; wasting time and resources for twelve years; inflicting emotional and psychological trauma on helpless students?

    This horrifically horizontal state of affairs is not peculiar to UniAbuja; many so- called federal tertiary institutions have become a hollow shell burdened by their old glory. University of Ife for instance, a once glorious citadel has its Law and Medicine programmes in a shambles right now.

    If gold rusts! It is a known fact that most state-owned universities and technical schools are just destinations for academic dereliction. For many, they are just going through the motion of studying as a good number of their courses are without accreditation at any given time.

    What really is the duty of the National Universities Commission and the Federal Ministry of Education? They are a most discredited bunch if federal institutions of learning are suffering accreditation hiccups. Are they lying in state?

     

  • ‘Credit managers, courts to blame’

    ‘Credit managers, courts to blame’

    Prof. Chris Onalo, Registrar/Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Credit Administration (ICA) in this interview with Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf gives useful suggestions as to how debts recovery efforts by AMCON can be further strengthened. Excerpts:

    Over 350 high net worth Nigerians are said to owe AMCON about N5trillion unpaid loans and debts. AMCON which is saddled with the responsibility to recover these debts having bought them over from banks is the facing of a failed credit. What does this portends for the economy?

    Well, my first reaction is that it is normal as a matter of fact, to owe in an economy that must advance. As such, it is not strange that 350 Nigerians out of about 200 million people are indebted to this amount. Of course, the wealth and the control of an economy are usually not vested in the hands of majority of the population it is usually in the hands of a few.

    Of course, the few that influences the economy obviously have qualifying capabilities to borrow from the banks. And in this case that is what has happened exactly. So it is normal for such individuals to borrow from the banks.

    But on the other hand, it is quite abnormal for such few individuals who have capabilities to access credits to owe up to as frightening and staggering as N5 trillion because if you divide N5trillion by 350 people, you can safely say that the economy has been brought down by just few individuals.

    In your view, who should take the blame in all of this?

    First of all, I will choose to blame the credit managers in all the institutions where these individuals have borrowed the money; meaning that the cannons of credits was not strictly observed in terms of analysis to determine their credit reputation, in terms of credit monitoring consequent upon approval of those individuals and finally in terms of recovering the defaulted credits.

    The critical question to ask is that where were the credit managers when those accounts were going into such serious default situation? Simply put, it means that the institutions that gave out those loans to such individuals have had lax credit conditions and very lopsided, ineffective, inefficient credit policies and procedures. Then I will also blame the incidence of N5trillion debts squarely on the porous and callous court administration. Yes, the court is to be largely held responsible for circumventing and allowing itself to be manipulated by these heavy weight individuals. The court had slowed down the process of justice. In a clear case of indebtedness, the court shouldn’t be seen to be technically allowing the debtors to delay the process that the fund owner had engaged to recover their money.

    If the court had maintained its tradition of quick dispensation of cases brought before it, there won’t be this delay in getting the debtors to pay. In other words, the court has been found to be a safe haven, a hidden place by these debtors. And that will definitely not augur well not only for the economy but the sanctity of the country as a whole. I think the time has come for the judiciary to stand up and live up to the public expectation, considering the fact that it is the last place of hope. But a situation where the court seems to be aiding and abetting the debtors to run away from their obligations is totally unacceptable.

    The credit profession and its professionals are people that do not like a situation where court continues to delay judgment or be used by the recalcitrant debtors to avoid payment or delay payment.

    What do you consider the way forward for AMCON under the circumstance?

    Going forward, the Asset Management Corporation has only one thing to do and that is to recover debts that they have bought and taken over. They’re not an ongoing credit provider institution. So the only thing that worries and bothers them is how to recover these debts and I think that there’s need for the authorities in the judicial arm of governance in the country to have pity for the economy because the consequence of having these staggering sums of money in the hands of few individuals is nothing but suffocating the economy and plundering the collective wealth of the Nigerian people. I think the judiciary needs to sit back and caution its officer that they should not became a safe haven for recalcitrant debtors; if you do that you’re weakening the economy, discouraging investments and slowing down business growth and expansion and ultimately you are killing creativity. These monies belong to private investors except that the intervention of the government came in to rescue such investments from total collapse.

    But yet AMCON which is formed by law is not given the support it needs to be able to recover these monies. I therefore would like to call on the intervention of executive arm led by Mr. President to intervene and hold a roundtable meeting with the authorities in the judiciary with a clarion call to the practitioners of law to order, especially the judges, magistrates, and those leaders in court where debts collection cases are to be heard and to prevent these so-called high net worth individuals from meddling with the growth of the economy. It is unfair and this should be stopped.

  • Credit, discredit and accreditation

    An oriental wisdom suggests that while the dead lie in state, the living, if need be, would be made to lie in a state. This, Hardball would translate to mean that the same delicate art of managing a cadaver could be applied in managing walking body. Or put differently again, just because a body is up and about does not mean that it is in a proper state of mind; it may well be lying in state – vertically!

    Now why is Hardball in a morbid mode in this season of goodwill? Well, a story broke over the weekend that medical students of the University of Abuja had to spend 12 years to graduate instead of six years! And it is not because they are particularly dull-heads that needed a minimum of two years to achieve an academic year.

    No! It was actually for no fault of the students who were actually rendered prostrate by the state. It just happens that the Federal Government that owns the institution through the instrumentality of the Federal Ministry of Education must have been in a certain awkward state while this aberration persisted. Or if you prefer, government and the university administration may have been lying in state (or lying about its state) for 12 years while all this lasted.

    This is exactly Hardball’s sentiments which also inform this hoary morbidity in a time of Yuletide. And there is no credit in the explanation that the institution was broiled in accreditation matters. Again that discredits both government and institution in equal measure.

    Why would a federal tertiary institution for that matter lack the necessary prerequisite for the statutory accreditation of its courses? And why would a university admit students into departments and faculties not properly accredited by the requisite accrediting authorities? Why would government and school management watch students suffer for so long; wasting time and resources for twelve years; inflicting emotional and psychological trauma on helpless students?

    This horrifically horizontal state of affairs is not peculiar to UniAbuja; many so- called federal tertiary institutions have become a hollow shell burdened by their old glory. University of Ife for instance, a once glorious citadel has its Law and Medicine programmes in a shambles right now.

    If gold rusts! It is a known fact that most state-owned universities and technical schools are just destinations for academic dereliction. For many, they are just going through the motion of studying as a good number of their courses are without accreditation at any given time.

    What really is the duty of the National Universities Commission and the Federal Ministry of Education? They are a most discredited bunch if federal institutions of learning are suffering accreditation hiccups. Are they lying in state?

  • Edo farmers, investors to get N500m credit

    Edo farmers, investors to get N500m credit

    Edo State government has partnered Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to set up a N500 million Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme (CACS), to provide guarantee for agribusiness investments, Governor Godwin Obaseki has said.

    He spoke at the Government House, Benin City, at the inauguration of a committee to oversee the scheme.

    It is intended to de-risk investments in agriculture.

    The governor said the programme, which was set up by the Federal Government through the CBN, was to provide credit for agricultural transactions, stressing that it was critical to his administration’s agricultural initiatives.

    He said the government was not interested in agribusiness to start farms, but only interested in de-risking the process and creating an enabling environment for entrepreneurs to emerge and thrive.

    Members of the nine-man committee headed by the Special Adviser to the Governor on Agriculture, Prince Joe Okojie, according to Obaseki, were selected based on their expertise and accomplishments.

    He noted that it was not another avenue for political patronage.

    The governor said the committee members would serve as a monitoring team and manage funds from the CBN to guarantee its judicious use by farmers across the three senatorial districts.

    He said the idea was to support large scale commercial agriculture so that their growth would stimulate and scale up activities of small scale farmers.

    “Time, experience and technology are important in agriculture. We need to engage the services of consultants and experts to work with the committee and use the advantage of the dry season to our benefit,” Obaseki said.

    He said over N500 million was available from expected funds and outlined their terms of reference to include: oversee and ensure equitable distribution of fund; promote an efficient and inclusive participation of key stakeholders; ensure proper monitoring and evaluation; guarantee integrity of each access to information; ensure fund usage by beneficiaries are in line with the terms of the scheme; monitor the impact and constantly look for ways to improve the probability of reaching the expected result of the scheme.

    The committee Chairman, Prince Joe Okojie, pledged to deliver on their terms of reference and promised to be fair and objective in the management of the credit facility.

  • CIBN chief advises banks on credit, liquidity management

    Commercial banks are expected to strike a balance between sound liquidity management and profitability, CIBN President/Chairman of Council, Prof. Segun Ajibola has said.

    Speaking at the third inaugural lecture of Caleb University, Imota, Ikorodu, Lagos State, he said so many things compete for funds in the hands of lenders.

    Ajibola said banks credits cause illiquidity in the system but remain the most profitable assets of for every lender.

    He listed the two pillars of financial intermediation as deposit mobilised from the surplus funds unit and loaned to the deficit funds unit in the economy.

    Ajibola, who spoke on the theme:  Rhythms and Riddles of Bank Credit: Synergies and Dislocations in Nigeria’s Economic Growth highlighted the criticisms and concerns facing the banking industry.

    He also noted that banks as financial intermediaries channel depositors’ funds to the deficit units to finance economic activities in the various sectors of the economy. “When discharging this function through credit allocation, banks’ decisions are often determined by the quality of collateral, political pressures, personality, loan size and covert benefits to loan officers influence,” he said.

    He said that for credit to have the desired impact on economic growth, it is important to have in place credit policies that could see to the direct punishment of credit abusers (customers or insiders), rather than the current practice of declaring such loans and advances as bad debts.

    He revealed that the impact and timing of credit on sub-sectoral growth, especially for agriculture and manufacturing, differ. “While the previous year’s loans and advances to agricultural sub-sector had a positive effect on economic growth, the current year’s loans and advances to the same sector had a negative impact. For the manufacturing sub-sector, current year’s credit facilities impacted positively on economic growth compared with those of the previous year,” he said.

    Professor Ajibola encourage banks to remain ethical and professional in the conduct of their lending business and continue to engage staffers of right skills and competencies in lending while devoting more attention to capacity building in the relevant areas.

    He also recommended that specialized financial institutions such as Bank of Agriculture, Bank of Industry, Nigeria Export-Import Bank and the new National Development Bank should stick faithfully to their mandates of lending to specific segments of the economy.

  • ICA unveils Friend of Credit award

    The Institute of Credit Administration (ICA) has instituted a unique national integrity boosting award to celebrate personality that has dedicated to life style of infectious sense of responsibility demonstrating honesty, integrity and truth in business dealings with other people, organizations and communities.

    A press statement signed by the Institute’s Registrar/Chief Executive Officer, Professor Chris Onalo, stated that the award designed for high-profile personality is intended to celebrate an individual who stands out impacting on lives and businesses; such that strengthens life essential traits such as integrity, honesty, truthfulness and reliability. The ‘Friend of Credit’ awardee would be profoundly reputed for a show of trustworthiness in dealing with others and an unalloyed respect for their own words, trickling down to integrity in giving, taking or managing credit to grow business and economy. As credit professionals, we watch over character conditions of other people, holding them accountable to honor their promises and obligations.

    Professor Onalo noted that there is urgent need to reawaken and promote a sense of personal integrity which he said was regrettably disappearing from the country’s national life.

    “ICA’s Friend of Credit (FOC) recognition award will locate top level personalities who live their public and business life with an infectious sense of obligatory responsibility; We must necessarily need to find personalities who exude honesty, integrity, reliability, truth and honour in the way they carry out their activities in their chosen career or profession and celebrate them as true role models,” said the ICA boss.

    “The majority of people no longer have any scruples in being crude and cruel in their dealings with others; they have lost their sense of honesty and integrity at the altar of greed, materialism and self-centered pursuits.”

  • Insurer assures of agric credit success

    The Managing Director, Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation (NAIC), Mrs. Folashade Joseph, has promised to ensure the implementation of the insurance component of  Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS).

    She spoke yesterday in Lagos at the opening of a capacity building programme organised to enlighten the Agric Desk Officers of commercial banks on how to implement the risk component of CACS.

    She said: “NAIC is committed to forging the appropriate partnerships with deposit money banks (DMBs) in the fulfilment of their mandate by the provision of the appropriate risk management services to the Agric investors bring financed by the banks.

    “ The deposit money banks and other financial institutions have been NAIC’s major distribution channels over the years with the DMBs, as credit providers, and NAIC, as risk management service provider.”

    Stressing the readiness of NAIC to improve its services to conform with modern realities, she said: “I wish to state that NAIC is poised to improve its services in the area of product development, claims payments, valuable farm extension services across the entire agric value chain.

    “Risk management remains an integral part of modern day agric financing model, as such the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) had deemed it fit to ensure that any agric investor accessing the CACS facility must have the project insured by NAIC as stated in the current lending guidelines for CACS loan to protect the project from failing due to unforseen risks.”

  • ‘Fayose got Range Rover, power bikes on credit’

    ‘Fayose got Range Rover, power bikes on credit’

    Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose got a Range Rover Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) valued at N41.4 million and two power bikes valued at N13.8 million on credit, a witness told the Judicial Commission of Enquiry investigating state finances between 2010 and 2014.

    A Brand Manager at Coscharis Motors Limited, Mr. Justin Ngele, who testified before the panel at yesterday’s sitting, said Fayose got the Autobiography model of the Range Rover on September 9, 2015.

    Ngele recalled that while the governor paid for the Range Rover, he was yet to pay for the two power bikes, which he said were delivered on July 13, 2015.

    The brand manager, who was led in evidence by lawyer to Coscharis, Mr. Peter Jiya, said the two power bikes, which were used by the governor’s outriders, were supplied at N6.8 million each.

    The witness said his firm supplied 156 units of various brands of Coscharis vehicles valued at N1,284,159,000, based on an oral agreement with the Kayode Fayemi administration.

    Ngele, who was led in evidence by lawyer to Coscharis Motor, Peter Jiya, said the company sealed the deal based on the trust it had for the state government.

    The brand manager said there was a letter of award by the state government on the purchase of additional 59 units of vehicles, which the company later supplied.

    He added that of the 235 vehicles supplied between 2013 to 2014, N1.449 billion had been paid, leaving a balance of N459 million being owed the company.

    But in his statement on oath, a witness from the Ministry of Local Government, Mr Samuel Akinjide, said the ministry received an invoice of N1,284,159,000 from the state government for 156 Ford Range of vehicles.

    Akinjide said the ministry was mandated to finance the purchase of the 154 Ford Range vehicles, which were for traditional rulers.

    The witness said even before the state government gave the directive, the then Commissioner for Finance, Mr Vincent Kolawole, had received the 156 vehicles.

    He added: “Coscharis Motors, on May 2, 2014, requested for payment in respect of 235 vehicles, instead of the 156 units the ministry was directed to purchase.”

    Akinjide said the local governments were to settle the debt on equal basis even though they did not solicit for it.

    He said: “The General Administration Department (GAD) and the Ministry of Finance have been contacted but they all claimed ignorance of the purchase.”

    The panel adjourned sitting till September 8 to enable Coscharis Motors present the original documents as evidence to be tendered because it rejected the photocopies supplied by the company’s lawyer.