Nigerian Supreme Court Spent N12bn Illegally In 5 Years, Audit Report Reveals

An audit report revealed that Nigeria’s Supreme Court spent more than N12 billion in violation of financial regulations over a five-year period.

The Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAuGF) has recommended that the funds be recovered and remitted to the treasury by the Chief Registrar of the Court.

The report focuses on the federal government’s expenditures and finances for the 2020 fiscal year. However, for the Supreme Court, it also includes payments and transactions from 2017-2021.
The current Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court, Hajo Sarki-Bello, took office in 2021, a year after the alleged infractions occurred under Hadizatu Uwani-Mustapha.

Mrs. Uwani-Mustapha, the Supreme Court’s chief registrar during the flagged transactions, retired from the position in June 2021.

Between 2016 and 2019, Walter Onnoghen was the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), followed by Tanko Muhammad from 2019 to 2022. They oversaw the Supreme Court during the period of controversial payments and transactions highlighted by Nigeria’s auditor-general.

Mr Muhammad abruptly resigned from office in June 2022, citing health issues, amid a raging, unprecedented protest from his fellow Supreme Court justices over his handling of the court’s finances and other affairs at the time.

Highlights of the issues raised in the 2020 audit report regarding transactions totaling N12.335 billion include: payments for contracts without budgetary provisions, diversion of government assets for private use, contract price inflation, irregular contract award, and contractor overpayment, among others.

The Supreme Court violated regulations by appropriating and receiving N645 million for broadcast equipment in 2017.

However, the court did not provide “relevant documents such as vouchers, vote book, store receipt vouchers, store ledger and invoices” for audit.

Following the court’s silence in providing an explanation for its failure to tender the documents, the audit report attributed the “anomalies” to “weaknesses in the Supreme Court’s internal control system.”

According to the report, the court funnelled over N10.223 billion through 124 vouchers to “various beneficiaries” in 2020, violating constitutional and financial regulations. The report stated, however, that the paid vouchers and other supporting documents were not presented for audit.

The report asked the Chief Registrar to justify a contractor’s overpayment of N826.75 million to the National Assembly, citing irregular contract awarding practices.

The Supreme Court’s accounting officer, the chief registrar, has been asked to recover the N826.75 million and remit it to the national coffers. Failure to do so will result in statutory sanctions under the Financial Regulations 2009.

The report described the circumstances surrounding the issue of overpayment to a contractor, revealing that a contract was awarded for the construction of an access road to justices’ quarters (Yellow Houses) in Abuja in April 2021, just as Ms Uwani-Mustapha left the Supreme Court.

The contract was awarded for N990 million (N990,494,207.80 in total). The level of work completed was valued at 50%, which amounted to N495 million (N495,247,103.90).

However, “the contractor was paid N827 million (N827,075,713.04 in total), representing 83.5 percent of the contract sum, resulting in an overpayment of N331,815,559.61,” the report stated, adding that the court provided no explanation for the violation.

In another case, the court awarded contracts totaling N371.5 million (N371,541,636 in total) for supplies, works, and services in 2017 with no budgetary provisions.

However, payments of N112 million (N112,117,106.37) were made in 2018, 2019, and 2020 “without evidence of appropriation.”

The report also revealed the sale of four landed properties owned by the court in Lagos.

The plots of land at 72 Alexander Avenue, 2 Club Road, 20 Cameron Road, and 15 Ikoyi Crescent, all in Abuja, were “disposed of without due process.”

The audit did not include evidence of the disposal, including authorisation, board of survey report, auctioneer engagement, advertisement, and disposal proceeds.

According to the report, the Supreme Court paid more than N3 billion for 45 vehicles between the fiscal years 2017 and 2021 in a case involving illegal possession of government property.

The report detailed the vehicle purchase, revealing that 18 of the 45 vehicles costing more than N515 million were assigned to seven Supreme Court justices for official use.

However, after the justices retired from the court, the official cars assigned to them were not returned for inspection, which the report described as “diversion of government assets for private use.”

Among the numerous violations detailed in the audit report, court management addressed the issue of justices’ retirement with official vehicles attached to them.

“The vehicles are part of the Supreme Court justices’ entitlements,” the court stated in the report.

However, it did not address other egregious violations in the report.

Lawyers and anti-corruption activists have questioned the National Judicial Council’s (NJC) illegal practice of concealing the judiciary’s budget details from public scrutiny, even resisting Freedom of Information requests.

The extent of the NJC’s desperation to keep financial details hidden from the public became clearer in 2022, when Abubakar Malami, the then-Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, challenged it to open its budget for transparency.

Despite the secrecy surrounding the judiciary’s budgets and finances, which the NJC helps to maintain, allegations of corruption and mismanagement of funds loom over the judiciary, sometimes coming from high-ranking insiders.

In his valedictory speech in May 2022, retiring Supreme Court Justice Ejembi Eko lamented corruption in the judiciary’s financial management.

He urged anti-graft agencies to investigate the financial records of the judiciary.

“Nothing prevents the Auditor-General of the Federation, the ICPC, and other investigatory agencies from opening the books of the judiciary to expose corruption in the management of budgetary resources,” Mr. Eko stated.

“That does not jeopardise the independence of the judiciary. Instead, it encourages accountability.

Within a month of Mr. Eko inviting anti-corruption agencies to investigate the judiciary’s finances, internal rumblings about corruption and financial mismanagement within the Supreme Court erupted.

In June 2022, in an unprecedented protest letter to then-CJN Tanko Muhammad, 14 Supreme Court Justices demanded “to know what has become of our training funds,” rhetorically asking, “Have they been diverted, or is it a plain denial?”

Later that year, in September, Abdu Aboki, one of the justices who authored the protest letter, used his valedictory speech before retiring from the Supreme Court bench to advocate for financial transparency and accountability in the judiciary.

In his valedictory speech, titled ‘My valedictory messages to the nation and judiciary in particular,’ Mr. Aboki urged “those in charge of administering the funds allocated to the judiciary” in Nigeria to be prudent, transparent, and accountable.

In a more direct and critical tone, another Supreme Court Justice, Dattijo Muhammad, who will retire as the court’s second most senior justice in October 2023, accused widespread corruption in the Nigerian Supreme Court and lower levels of the judiciary.

Mr Muhammad was one of 14 Supreme Court justices who drafted the protest letter sent to then-CJN Tanko Muhammad in June 2022. However, by the time Dattijo Muhammad retired in October last year, Olukayode Ariwoola, who had led the 14 protesting justices more than a year before, had succeeded Tanko Muhammad as CJN.

In his valedictory speech last October, Dattijo Muhammad criticised the handlers of the funds allocated to the judiciary, claiming that despite the “phenomenal” increase in the judiciary’s budgets over the years, there had been no commensurate improvement in judges’ welfare.

He also called for an investigation into the judiciary’s handling of its funds.

He stated, “Unrelenting searchlights must be beamed to unravel how the sums are expended.”

With the Supreme Court’s silence on the infractions highlighted in the most recent audit report, Nigeria’s auditor-general’s office directed the chief registrar to account for, recover, and remit the funds to the federation account.

It specifically requested that the chief registrar provide proof of compliance with the recommendations of the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee.

However, this is not the first time that the Auditor-General of the Federation has indicted ministries, departments, and government agencies for serious violations of financial regulations.

However, the audit reports’ recommendations are never implemented by the National Assembly or adopted by Nigeria’s law enforcement agencies, emboldening public institutions to commit grand corruption in the form of diversion of public funds.