GOV. LALONG AND GOMMOS IN ALLEGED BARC’S SCANDAL IN PLATEAU STATE

The governor of Plateau State,  Simon Bako Lalong and Ezekiel Gommos,
MD of  Plateau Investment and Development Company (PIPC), are
currently embroiled in alleged financial scandal.
The scandal revolves around the Brewery Agro and Research Company Ltd
(BARC Farm), a subsidiary of Jos International Brewery, which was in
the early 1990s was under the ownership of the Plateau State
government.
BARC Farm is known to have been sold to a company called ILHAMA
Enterprises Ltd in 1993, a company owned by the former governor of
Adamawa State, Admira Murtala Nyako. And like a bad coin the issue of
the sale continues to raise problems because of its dubious nature.
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.
The situation has been compounded by the fact that different figures
have been discovered over the years since 1993 concerning the amount
for which the company was sold.
During the sale, the MD of PIPC,, Ezekiel Gommos handled the process
from the beginning and being a very close of the governor, he was
later appointed the Secretary to the State Government and continued to
evade the question of how much BARC Farm was sold for and what account
the money was paid into.
He initially said the company was sold for N19 million but other
documents quoted him as saying it was N18 million while claiming N27
million in later years and later claimed it was N54 million for the
sale. All the claims were backed with documents.
It was 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 was claimed has been paid back to
the buyer rather than retained as part payment for the company.
At the time of sale, the 5,000 hectares of 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 but they
were never heard due to constant manipulation of facts.
Lalong was said to be a barrister at PIPC when Gommos was the Managing
Director and he was allegedly involved in the process. And since 2015,
Gommos has been aggressively offering to broker the reverse sale of
the company from Admiral Nyako back to Plateau State Government for
N1.8 billion and in 2017,  the value rose to N3 billion without fully
disclosing the amount for which it was sold.
To crown the scandal, the government has allegedly setting aside N3
billion from the Paris Club refund to buy back BARC Farm  rather than
paying the long suffering workers in the state.
Under former Governor Joshua Dariye, an investigation committee was
set up, the committee visited Admiral Nyako who claimed that he paid
N180 million for the purchase of the company but when the truth was
uncovered, the final report of the committee never saw the light of
the day.
Gommos who allegedly orchestrated the entire scam is known to own
large properties in the USA, Abuja, and Jos including hotels and a
business school which he sold to former governor Jang administration
for about N350 million.
In recent time, the declaration of the buyback of the company has been
heralded by the ignorant as a great achievement but in actual fact it
is an extention of the scam