SGF spends N65m on already existing website

An evaluation of the 2017 budget performance of the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF), headed by Boss Mustapha, has revealed that the sum of N65 million was spent on an official website that already existed.

According to a report by Premium Times, the budget review revealed that the office claimed to have fully utilised the sum of N64,855,875 on the website quoted as "OSGF WEBSITE". The budget performance record revealed that the procurement process is ongoing.

While defending the 2017 budget performance in January 2018, the SGF, Mustapha, had told a Senate committee that his office received 50% of its appropriation for capital projects.

"Performance for capital is N1.2 billion released as at end of December, 2017. It represents 50 per cent. We are hoping that the National Assembly will extend the lifespan of the budget so that we can handle other procurement processes," he said.

When he also met with the House Committee on Governmental Affairs in January, he reviewed the 2017 budget of his office to the committee and defended the estimates for 2018.

He had also informed the committee that N65 million would be spent in 2018 to build a government website.

When Premium Times contacted Mustapha's spokesperson, Mohammed Nakorji, he refused to comment on why the claims of amount spent on the site differs from the quality on offer.

Website has no special features

According to technological experts contacted by Premium Times, the claims of spending N65 million on the website are dubious.

After a review of the website, communications officer of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN), Sodiq Alabi, said the OSGF has to provide more details to back its claim.

"We have reviewed the website, it is simply shocking that N65 million was spent on the website. It's implausible. OSGF must provide more details on what they did with the money. The website has no special features to justify more than a million naira budget.

"It doesn't look like they are even updating the website. The copyright is 2013. It looks very impossible and suspicious."

Another review by Cheta Nwanze, Head of Research, SBM Intelligence, said the N65 million could never be justified.

He said, "The website was built using the Joomla CMS, which is a free content management system. All of the media is hosted on YouTube, which is an external server. It uses Google Hosted Libraries for its content distribution. No way can it cost N65 million, unless I heard you wrong.

"Depending on the hosting package, $100 per month can get you a very good hosting plan. If you insist on using Google apps to host your emails and documents, that's $5 per user per month. So you can do the maths."