If Fashola wanted to steal, it wouldn't be N78m - Akabueze

Former Lagos state Commissioner for Economic Planning and
Budget under Babatunde Fashola's government, Ben Akabueze
 has come out to defend his former boss in the N78 million website
 scandal which broke weeks ago. In an interview with Kadaira Ahmed of
Straight Talk With Kaidaia, Ben Akabueze says they ran a very detailed
government that checked against fraud and that if the former governor
wanted to steal, it wouldn't be N78 million

"I think it would be useful for people to look at the full scope of the project and then

 make a determination about whether or not it did not represent value for money. 

For me, we ran an annual budget of over N400bn. I think that if he (Fashola) really

 wanted to steal money, it wouldn’t be N78m out of over N400bn that he had access to. 

Of course, every kobo of public funds must be accounted for and I hope in the future, 

we can get the full facts and it will be made available to the public. I don’t know of anybody

 succeeding at anything like that (stealing) because we had a system that we designed as 

much as possible to prevent such. Take for instance, in our capital expenditure, we had 

in-house experts, so, if it was a construction project, regardless of the agency of government

 undertaking the project, the experts in the ministry of works and infrastructure would do an

independent assessment of the cost. We had quantity surveyors, engineers, architects that offered advice. If it was an IT related project, the team in the Ministry of Science and Technology would do an independent evaluation and so for you to steal; you would need to corrupt the whole process.””he said