The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, put up a no-show on Tuesday [today] at the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) where he was expected to address allegations concerning his ties to a company that clinched a contract from the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development.
Despite being scheduled to appear at 11.00am, journalists waiting at the scene to cover the meeting reported that the minister rather wrote a letter to the Bureau, seeking postponement.
The stated reason for the postponement was a prior official engagement that demanded his immediate attention.
New Planet Projects Limited, the implicated company, is alleged to have secured a substantial N438 million consultancy contracts from the Humanitarian Affairs Ministry.
The financial transaction is currently under investigation, forming part of the probe into the suspected N3 billion expenditures by the Ministry under the supervision of its now-suspended Minister, Betta Edu.
Tunji-Ojo, fingered as a shareholder in the company, asserted that he relinquished his directorial role in 2019 upon winning election to the House of Representatives.
His wife assumed managerial responsibilities thereafter.
The CCB had invited the minister to provide evidence of his disengagement from the company’s activities, along with a review of his asset declaration form, in collaboration with a team of investigators.
Upon journalists arriving at the CCB office located on the fifth floor of Phase 1 of the Federal Secretariat Complex, there was no sighting of the Minister’s imminent appearance.
Rather, a staff from the Public Relations Unit conveyed that the meeting had been postponed, although a new date for the Minister’s revisit is yet to be fixed.
