The House of Representatives has
invited former Managing Directors of Niger-Delta Development Commission, NDDC,
Timi Alaibe, Nsima Ekere, and other officials, including Nelson Brambaifa,
Emmanuel Agwariavwodo, to appear before them on Friday over N61.4bn abandoned
projects.
The invitation was made on
Wednesday after the Green Chamber grilled officials of the Commission.
The officials grilled by the
lawmakers were the acting Managing Director, NDDC, Akwagaga Enyina; Director of
Finance and Supply, Linus Ogbalubi; and Director of Project Monitoring and
Supervision, Ukeme Nkamare.
The House of Representatives
asked them to provide documents over overpayment of contractors and contracts
awarded without execution.
The ad hoc committee set up by
the House to investigate projects abandoned by the NDDC raised a series of
questions, bordering on how several contracts were allegedly awarded and paid
for by the commission outside the approved budget of the commission.
The chairman of the committee,
Nicholas Ossai, read out parts of a report by the Office of the Auditor-General
on NDDC’s activities between 2013 and 2018.
He quoted the report as saying
that, “Considering the enormous amount of money paid to the contractors as
mobilisation fees without any value derived thereby, it can be affirmed that
the commission lacked effective control in the process of contract award and
payment.”
According to Ossai, the key issue
raised by the auditors, which the NDDC had yet to respond to, was that the
commission should recover the sum of N61.4bn that the contractors had
collected.
He cited a case of how contracts
for the emergency repairs of 250 roads were awarded earlier in the year without
the approval of the Bureau of Public Procurement and out of NDDC’s approved
budget.
The committee also asked how a
contractor was paid over 50 per cent of a contract sum of over N1bn, with only
11 per cent of the job done, and the contract was cancelled and re-awarded for
over N10bn.
Ossai asked if the NDDC could
remember awarding a contract to a company for the Ogborodo shore protection.
“The figure here is that the
contract, with a sum of N1.042bn, was awarded to this engineering company and
examination of the NDDC contract payment status from the Finance and Account
Department revealed that the contractor had been paid 50 per cent – N521.3m –
for job that was done less than 11 per cent,” he stated.
Based on the inability of the
NDDC officials to answer several questions posed to them, the committee invited
all the former managing directors of the commission, including Timi Alaibe,
Nsima Ekere, Nelson Brambaifa, Emmanuel Agwariavwodo, to appear before them on
Friday over N61.4bn abandoned projects.
It also stated that the Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission would be invited to investigate the matter.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com