The National Insurance Commission, NAICOM has cleared misrepresentation in a newspaper publication of August 29, 2022 that the Commission has among other things deceived President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR and the Federal Executive Council into approving the purchase of a new N4bn office building in Abuja.
The Vanguard story stated that the Commission bought a “ready to use magnificent office complex” rather than an uncompleted building.
Clearing the misrepresentation and steering away from joining issues with the media, the Commission said it has become imperative that the general public be availed with the facts as they are.
Its position on the issue, “The management of the Commission through the Honourable Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning presented to the Federal Executive Council presided over by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR an unfinished property for approval to be acquired as NAICOM Academy and office accommodation following the approval by the immediate past Governing Board of the Commission. All documents relating to the property clearly state that the property was in an unfinished state.
“The Commission had prior the FEC approval, obtained a “No Objection” from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) following the valuation of the property by the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing,” the stated added.
It further stated that adequate due diligence was conducted on the property for acquisition and all relevant approvals were secured by the Commission. Provision, NAICOM stated, was made in the 2022 approved annual budget of the Commission for the purpose of acquiring the building for the Commission.
According to NAICOM, the building would serve the dual purpose of housing the newly established NAICOM Academy, an initiative of the present leadership of the Commission to address knowledge gap in the insurance sector regulation and supervision not only in Nigeria but across Africa and beyond and also serve as the new head office of the Commission.
Reinforcing the reason for the purchase, it cleared that it would address the problem of low insurance penetration, entrench the culture of insurance in every part of the country and enhance the effectiveness of its surveillance in all the geopolitical zones of the country, the expansion of the Commission’s infrastructural facilities is inevitable thus the Commission requires a befitting Office accommodation to curtail any future office space crises.
