The report of the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF), produced on the management of the Green 2000 project by the Community Agricultural Domains Program (PRODAC), resulted in nine (9) recommendations concerning the people involved in carrying out the project. Only Mamina Daffé and Ibrahima Cissé are currently in prison. If no recommendation was made against former minister Mame Mbaye Niang, former coordinator of PRODAC, it was recommended the translation of Jean-Pierre Senghor, first national coordinator, before the Court of Auditors for mismanagement, according to The Observer.
Jean-Pierre Senghor pinned by the IGF for serious management misconduct
The IGF inspectors, mandated to examine only the Green 2000 project, criticize the former national coordinator, Jean-Pierre Senghor, for “a serious management error”. According to L’Observateur, he would have validated and irregularly transmitted requests for payment of the unsecured start-up advance. These validations, without any prior control, concern an amount of 5,957,099,077 FCFA, according to the conclusions of the report.
The IGF specifies that Jean-Pierre Senghor, by guaranteeing the payments without the required prior guarantee, failed in his contractual obligations and his duty to safeguard public funds. The Observer reports that, although Senghor admitted his levity, citing a concern to accelerate the project, his argument is difficult to accept given the one-year delay in notification of the contract.
Failures in the implementation of the contract
According to L’Observateur, the IGF report highlights a series of contractual violations in the execution of the Green 2000 project. Among these irregularities, the one-year delay in notifying Green 2000 of the contract is qualified unacceptable maneuver for an emergency project. The IGF also criticizes the premature validation by Jean-Pierre Senghor of payments to Locafrique before the necessary formalities have been completed.
The report highlights that the letters signed by Senghor led to early and excessive payments: 5,920,107,200 FCFA were withheld on the basis of a calculation including tax instead of 5,016,383,928 FCFA, an amount excluding tax. The Observer adds that this difference of 903,723,272 FCFA could have been avoided if Green 2000’s contractual obligations had been respected before any payment.
-Mamina Daffé’s warnings
According to L’Observateur, Mamina Daffé, former coordinator of the project, had warned in 2015 of the limits of the Green 2000 project. He considered that this project, poorly prepared, compromised the strategic objective of massive job creation.
In a letter addressed to the IGF mission, Mamina Daffé proposed adjustments, including the division of land into autonomous exploitable units and the installation of irrigation infrastructure. However, he claims to be unaware of the fate reserved for these recommendations. L’Observateur reports that Daffé considers that the Green 2000 project would not, in the long term, create more than 150 jobs, a far cry from the initial objectives.
Khadim Bâ, Managing Director of Locafrique, shares this opinion. In the columns of L’Observateur, he criticizes the numerous shortcomings in the execution of the project and urges the State to exercise caution. According to him, the large sums already disbursed do not reflect the level of physical progress of the project.
Still according to L’Observateur, Ibrahima Cissé, imprisoned in the same way as Mamina Daffé, had requested a specialized transit house, ITAAA (International Transit Al Amine), for customs clearance services and the transport of equipment to the final sites.
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