The largest donor, in terms of HIV and malaria, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) has suspended its donations to Nigeria following discovery of large scale fraud to the tune of millions of dollars.
Mark Dybul, an executive director at Global Fund, said an audit report exposed “challenges of grants not achieving impact targets, poor quality of health services, treatment disruptions and fraud, corruption and misuse of funds”.
“The audit report on Nigeria covered US$889 million of Global Fund grants, and found systemic weakness in the controls in various government entities,” he said.
“The investigation report found fraud and collusion in the amount of US$3.8 million.”
“In addition, the audit identified a lack of documentary evidence related to human resources and payment approval processes, with $7.65 million identified as unsupported expenditures,” he said.
“Following work performed by a third party fiscal agent, US$5.1 million has now been verified, based on a review of supporting documentation that was not available during the audit; US$1.0 million requires further clarification, and US$1.5 million of expenditure that has not yet been reviewed due to timing.
“We expect to be able to provide a final, comprehensive view of these expenditures by 10 May.”
The organization called on President Buhari to take appropriate action.