Following on the heels of the payroll fraud that was recently discovered by the audit probe in Presidential Amnesty Programme office, another staggering amount running into N7b has been uncovered as scholarship bill for last year alone.
This time, the amount is said to have been spent last year in paying for scholarships to beneficiaries.
PAP, we gathered since inception, has been awarding scholarship to students from the Niger Delta states both home and abroad whether one is ex-agitators or not .
And according to our source , the programme has been abused by civil servants in the office by not only inflating the bill but have also packed all Nigerians whether you are from the oil producing area of the country or not. As at last check, according to the source, students from North, non oil producing areas in South West, South East populate the list.
The N7b is what the newly appointed administrator, Ndiomu, met on his table and instead of appending his signature for approval, he sent up a probe to look into it.
The panel we gathered has been painstakingly, going through the bill and names of those studying in Nigeria with a view to ascertaining their authenticity while the new administrator has put a stop to all fresh and old scholarships until the probe is conculded.
A team, we also learnt will soon proceed abroad to verify the bills and ascertain if the students are studying there.
“Ndiomu has vowed to santinise PAP and that is what he has started doing by delisting fake names and duplicated ones,” our source said.
