A group under the aegis of Concerned Plateau Indigene has accused the Governor of Plateau State, Simon Bako Lalong and the former Managing Director of Plateau Investment and Development Company ( PIPC) Ezikiel Gommos of cover up in the sales of Brewery Agro and Research Company Ltd (BARC Farm.BARC Farm, was a subsidiary of Jos International Brewery which
in the early 1990s was under the ownership of the Plateau State government who created this through Plateau Investment and Development Company Ltd (PIPC), also owned by the government of Plateau State.
The company was alleged to have been sold to a company called ILHAMA Enterprises Nigeria Ltd in 1993, a company owned by the former Governor of Adamawa State, Admiral Nyako.
It was reliably gathered that due to the very dubious nature of the sale, the issue of the sale of BARC Farm continues to raise questions years after. it was sold.
“One of the major problems is that to date, nobody has been held accountable for the amount the company was sold for and the nature of its receipt into the government.
“Several different figures have been discovered over the years since 1993. During the sale, the MD of PIPC Ltd Ezekiel Gommos handled the process from the beginning. Being a very close friend of the Governor, he was later appointed the Secretary to the State Government
(SSG) and continued to dodge the question of how much BARC Farm was sold for and what account the funds were paid into. He initially said the company had been sold for N19 million.
“Other documents quote him saying it was sold for N18 million. When questioned in in previous years, he said it was sold for N27 million.
Another answer he gave in subsequent years was that it was sold for N54 million. Documents exist for all these statements.
“It was also discovered that initially instead of receiving a payment from ILHAMA Ltd the buyer, the amount received was described as a loan of N17 million given to government and it is claimed that it was was paid back to the buyer rather than retained as part payment for the company.
“At the time of sale, the 5,000 hectare land on which the company was built was valued at N2 million and the local original owners have expressed much distress at being cheated by the government. Their cry has never been heard due to constant manipulation of the facts”, a source said.
The source added further that , in 2015, Mr Ezekiel Gommos joined the new government of Plateau State at first without any official appointment, claimed to be the Chairman of PIPC Ltd, the company where he was once Managing Director during the BARC Farm sale transaction. It should be noted that he worked there alongside the man that is now Governor Lalong. During the Barc Farm transaction in 1993, Lalong was a barrister at PIPC so he was intricately involved in the process.
“Since 2015, Gomos has been aggressively offering to broker the reverse sale of BARC Farm from Admiral Nyako back to Plateau State Government first for the amount of N1.8 billion and in 2017 the value almost doubled to N3 billion all without ever fully disclosing the original sale price and where the money was paid. Nor ever showing how this astronomical buy back amount was reached.
Yet they have commenced celebrations that N3 billion of the recent Paris Club refund, instead of being spent on public services and paying long suffering workers salaries, has been withdrawn and put aside to buy back Barc Farm”, he revealed.
During previous governments, numerous questions have been asked about the whereabouts of the money transacted from 1993 to date. Under former Governor Joshua Dariye, an investigation committee was set up headed by the Special Adviser on Legal Matters. The committee discovered that indeed the money received from Admiral Nyako
