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The Controversial Vessel
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Is this another attempt to milk us dry, put the hand in the till by government officials ? Is it much ado over nothing, the government’s new song of transparency? Senior government officials are been fingered in a shady deal.
Reliable information has it that the Nigerian Government is being advised to purchase an abandoned Kenyan Vessel for an inflated price of N10 Billion.
The trio who are the masterminds of this dubious deal are the Minister for Defence, Bello Haliru, Chief of Defence, Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Pentirin Staff, and Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral OS Ibrahim.
The Kenyan Government , the original owner of the Vessel named KNS Jasiri, was made to sign the contract for the Vessel procurement in 2003 for £51, 997,00 Million (about N8.4 Billion) but had to stop payment when Euromarine, the Barcelona, Spain based company contracted to do the job allegedly inflated the actual cost of the project.
With the contract between Nairobi and the Spanish company gone bad, the Barcelona firm began to scurry the world looking for potential buyers.
Enter Nigeria the dumping ground.
According to a top source at the Defense Ministry in Nigeria “they came first through some people and I heard they were referred to the Minister and before we knew it, we saw the item in the budget.”
The source added, “we did our own investigation about that Vessel and we found out that such is not befitting for the Navy of today, not even the smallest country in the world will buy such. We don’t understand why our Government wants to spend such amount on a worthless Vessel.”
According to the source, “it was not in the original budget of the Navy, I guess it was smuggled in like they did other items.