Lagos issues 1174 pre-payment certificates, rejects 77

Lagos State government said it issued 1174 pre-payment certificates in the sum of N60,774,589,420.49 relating to 1174 projects and procurements in the last one year.

Ben Akabueze, the state commissioner for economic planning and budget, who made this known during the 2014 ministerial media chat to mark the 7th anniversary of the Babatunde Fashola led administration, noted that 1097 of the projects worth N55,859,363,995.33 were issued to contractors while 304 certificates worth N4,915,255,255,425.16 were for direct labour\procurement for various ministries, directorates and agencies (MDAs).

Akabueze also disclosed that the monitoring and evaluation department also returned 77 pre-payment certificates worth N2.382,589,669.86 to various MDAs as a result of observed anomalies and unsatisfactory execution of the various contracts awarded.

Speaking further, he said it was not enough to budget and allocate resources for programmes and projects implementation, there was need to monitor same to ensure that the public have value for money expended on such ventures. This, he said, was why all government projects, programmes and policies valued at N500,000 and above are monitored, evaluated and certified by the monitoring and evaluation department before payments are made.

He said the ministry also produced annual performance management and assessment reports on government programmes and projects to measure their impacts on the lives of the people of the state.