Fela Durotoye revealed that he rejected an inflated N5bn contract for leadership training from the Federal Government.

 

Fela Durotoye, a former aide to President Bola Tinubu, has revealed that he turned down a fraudulent N5 billion federal government contract meant for the leadership training of youths across the 774 local government areas in Nigeria.

 

During a colloquium hosted by the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) in Abuja, Durotoye shared information about the incident.

 

Durotoye, a well-known public speaker, shared his story of receiving a phone call from a government official about a contract for ethical leadership training in all LGAs. He was asked to provide an invoice that explains the cost of the training. After having a discussion with his team, they submitted a bid of N1.3 billion, with no management fees included.

 

“Three days later, I got a call that ‘congratulations, Fela, you have been given the task,’” he said. “He said, but when we look at the costing, we said it is not possible that this costing could have been this and that most likely that you did not put anything for yourself. So, we decided to put something for you. For you, we want to put N700 million on top of this, so you will get N2 billion, but you will send us an invoice of N5 billion. We need that invoice in the next three days before they close the account for the year. I had to turn off my phone for three days because at some point he was calling me every 30 minutes.”

 

Durotoye claimed to have seen a newspaper report the following year that revealed that four individuals in the presidency had been charged with stealing N425 million for the purpose of ethical leadership training.

 

He clarified that the contract issue did not occur under Tinubu's administration or the immediate past one, but it happened several years ago.

 

The importance of strong personal values in leadership and decision-making was emphasized by Durotoye.

 

Durotoye received the position of Senior Special Assistant on National Values and Social Justice by Tinubu in October 2023. Despite this, he only held the position for six months.