Civil servants at Nigeria's federal ministry of health have been taken in for questioning by the country's leading law enforcement agency amid allegations of corruption over misused health funds.

As part of a crackdown on financial mismanagement, Nigerian president Umaru Yar'Adua ordered the health department, along with other ministries, to return unspent money from the 2007 budget to the federal treasury. Previously, the norm — according to one ministry source — was to use the unspent money as a 'Christmas bonus'.

But according to The Daily Trust newspaper, staff at the health ministry headquarters in the capital of Abuja are accused of drawing up and widely circulating a document dividing up a total of 300 million Nigerian Naira (US$2.5 million) in late 2007, and transferring the amounts into their personal accounts.

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