The House of Representatives has threatened to make sure that no fund was appropriated in the 2020 budget of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) unless the agency paid over one Trillion Naira debt it is owing contractors who executed projects in the Niger Delta region.
Chairman of the House Ad-hoc Committee on abandoned projects by NDDC, Nicholas Ossai, who gave this indication Monday at an investigative public hearing, revealed that almost all the contractors who executed one project or another in the Niger Delta region for the development of the area were still being owed by the NDDC.
Ossai noted that from the documents submitted to the Committee, many of the contractors had completed their jobs and were still being owed for so long after they executed jobs for the Commission.
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He said that “for contractors who have finished their jobs and have not been paid, we are going to use our powers to ensure that provisions are made in the next budget for such otherwise we may not pass it”.
Some of the contractors who appeared and also made presentations lamented that the agency is currently having a debt profile of one Trillion Naira on the projects that had been executed in the nine Niger Delta States.
One of the contractors, Fubara Blessing, who told the Committee that so much money had been voted for NDDC but none of the contractors had been paid by the agency.
He advised the committee to ensure that it plugged all the loopholes that had been identified in the payment system to ensure that no contractor was paid by the Commission until all contracts awarded by it are completed.
On the other hand, Oghogho Emeni, Chief Executive Officer of Atom Global Contractors Ltd lamented that most female contractors were not given jobs to execute in the agency despite having qualifications to execute them.
The Committee adjourned the investigative hearing to Wednesday, September 25, 2019 for more contractors to appear and give more testimonies to the committee.
