Femab Properties, a Nigerian real estate company, has been accused of duping the University of Sierra Leone (USL), a public-funded tertiary institution in Freetown, after taking $4.5 million (an equivalent of N7.1 billion) to build a business school.
FIJ learnt on Monday that the Sierra Leonean government has opened an investigation into Femab’s dealings, and it was not the company’s first wrongdoing.
According to a special report published by Africa Confidential on Friday, the Nigerian company had taken the sum from the university in a shady agreement and disappeared without fulfilling its side of the bargain after receiving the advance from the university.
In 2017, Femab, whose Nigerian Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is Abiodun Aguda, won the USL’s Institute of Public Administration and Management’s (IPAM) bid for a three-year project to build accommodation that can house up to 1,000 students and 100 university staff in the country’s Bureh Town.
The details of this contract require Femab Properties to bear the initial 75% cost of the project, while IPAM would cover the remaining 25%.
However, Sahr Jusu, a financial secretary at the Sierra Leonean Ministry of Finance, spotted some irregularities in the contract. He noted that there was no timetable for Femab to provide its share of the funds, and the real estate firm could disappear after receiving the advance payment.
Jusu also noticed that the contract allowed the real estate company to demand its 75% share even if the project was incomplete.
Despite these concerns, IPAM went ahead to pay $4.5 million for the project: $3.5 million as a commercial loan from the United Bank for Africa (UBA), underwritten by the Sierra Leonian government, and $1 million from its internal revenue.
As soon as Femab received the money, it cleared some bushes on the campus site and erected a wall before disappearing, although this was after demanding the remaining $500,000 from the USL.
Two years ago, USL wrote to Femab demanding a refund of the advance 25% paid to it but the report states that the firm is yet to return a single leone.
“The University is demanding an immediate refund of monies paid to Femab as part payment for the mobilisation to the IPAM site,” Foday Sahr, the USL Vice-Chanceller, wrote on Femab in March 2022.
Before news of Femab’s shady deal with the Sierra Leonean government emerged, FIJ had reported in 2021 how Aguda had denied Oyegoke Adebisi, an engineer he enlisted for a project, his N3 million balance after executing a project for him in 2015.
Adebisi had executed the construction of a semi-detached duplex in Diamond Estate Phase II, Sangotedo, Lagos, for the company at the time.
On Monday, Amadu Lamrana Bah, a Sierra Leonean journalist, shared on X that Patrick Sandy, the country’s Director of Public Education at the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) confirmed that an investigation had been opened into the case.
“The Director of Investigations has now been instructed to open an investigation,” Bah posted.
Credit: FIJ
