• Friday, March 29, 2024
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How NDDC awarded over N1trn contracts in 7 months, against N400bn budget in 2019

Abia oil host communities accuse NDDC, ASOPADEC of neglect

As forensic auditing of the finances of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) gathers momentum, it has been revealed that the sacked acting managing director of the Commission and his team awarded emergency contracts worth over N1 trillion in just seven months of 2019.

This is said to be against an annual budget of about N400 billion. The acting executive director, projects, Cairo Ojougboh, who declared this during a press briefing at the Commission’s headquarters in Port Harcourt Wednesday, said the emergency contracts system was aimed at attending to some urgent situations through some contracts.

In recent years, the presidency had discouraged the award of new contracts to enable the Commission focus on wiping out abandoned projects and sanitising the system. However, new MDs prefer to award fresh contracts. Some thus used the emergency contract system to give massive award of contracts.

“In 2017, the NDDC awarded a total of 201 emergency contracts valued at N100.39 billion; in 2018, total 1,057 emergency contracts valued at N162.68 billion were awarded; and in just seven months of 2019, it awarded a total of 1,921 emergency contracts valued at N1.07 trillion,” he said.

“We are talking about a total of over N1.3 trillion in less than three years. The yearly budget of the NDDC is hardly above N400 billion and a situation where contracts that do not qualify for emergencies were fraudulently awarded to over one trillion naira value in less than one year amounts to not only stealing from the pulpit but stealing the entire pulpit.”

The ED said President Muhammadu Buhari saved the NDDC from being shut down due to over trading, bloated contracts, and other sharp practices in the Commission. He said the Commission was sinking and would have been “killed and buried” but for the President’s intervention.

He said Buhari had ordered a forensic audit of the Commission and appointed an interim management Committee (IMC), headed by acting managing director, Joi Nunieh, with other members, including Ibanga Etang (finance/administration).

He said the inauguration of the contracts verification committee was part of strategies to kick-start the forensic audit, though critics say some of the members were rather part of the racket in the Commission.

Ojougboh, who is the chairman of the Committee, however explained that the two-week exercise would cover all completed, as well as on-going projects and programmes of the Commission. He emphatically declared that the NDDC has not delivered on its mandate, 19 years after.

“At best, it has been a lack-lustre performance with very little to show for the humongous resources that have accrued to it over the past 19 years. Stories of pervasive corruption, flagrant abuse of due process, abandoned projects, poor quality project delivery, etc. at the NDDC, have adorned our media space over the years.”

He announced submission of verification documents to by contractors, adding that the exercise would, among other things, establish the true position of the emergency contract regime between 2016 and 2019 in the NDDC. He observed that it was common knowledge that some of the awards were not only spurious but criminal as available records, according to him, showed that most of the awards were not backed by budget, bills of engineering measurement and drawings. “They were just open cheques for contractors and their collaborators to fill in at the nearest banks,” he said.

Ojougboh assured that the verification exercise would expose those spurious contracts and advised contractors with fake or spurious awards to stay away from the various documentation centres in their own interest.

He charged members of the Contract Verification Committee to discharge their duties diligently, honestly and professionally. He urged them to note that the entire people of the Niger Delta and the Commission had placed heavy responsibilities on their shoulders.

Ignatius Chukwu, Port Harcourt