The Ministry of Information and Culture has launched an inquest into how a memo from the ministry requesting for a loan to fund the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed’s trip to China was leaked.
On Thursday 12 May 2016, SIGNAL broke the news about how the Minister sought to obtain a loan from the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) to fund his trip to China. Investigations by SIGNAL revealed that the request contravened civil service rules and regulations.
The letter was signed by Director of Public Relations and Protocol, Mr. Peter Adama, and addressed to Acting Director General, NBC.
The outcome of the probe was not yet known as of the time of filing this report.
However, it was learnt that top officials of the broadcast regulatory agency were in Lagos when the memo arrived on Thursday and it was therefore submitted to the finance department.
A report by Punch newspaper on Saturday reports that since the minister assumed office in November 2015, he had made requests to the agency three times.
“Security men at NBC have not been paid since January. The last time they were paid, the contractor was asked to source for money and be refunded later. There is no money to buy fuel to power the generators, yet requests for funding keep coming from the minister” a source who did not want to be named told Punch, corroborating SIGNAL’s initial report that broke the story.
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