1,733 Contractors Made Away With NDDC’S N70b Mobilisation Fees Without Going To Site

According to details available

The Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation has revealed that 1,733 contractors handling various projects of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) between 2008 and 2012 ran away with N70 billion mobilisation fees without going to site to execute the projects.

An Assistant Director, Public Accounts Committee Division in the office, Mr. Emmanuel Akpan, made the revelation while making submissions before the Senate Committee on Public Accounts (PAC) in Abuja yesterday. Akpan asserted that while the NDDC, in response to a query by the Office of the Auditor- General over the contract scam, claimed that projects worth N11 billion only were affected, the Auditor- General’s office, based on its findings so far, could authoritatively establish that the total sum of mobilisation fees paid to the ghost contractors was N70.4 billion. But the NDDC told the committee that only N11 billion was the actual worth of contracts not executed between 2011 and 2012, contrary to the position of the Auditor-General’s Office.

Akpan said: “The real value of contracts upon which monies have been collected by NDDC contractors during the period under review, as at the time of auditing, was N70.4 billion and not N11 billion the NDDC office is claiming now. ”

There is need for NDDC officials to practically prove that the contractors involved in close to N60 billion gap they are trying to create, have actually gone to site and executed their projects not on paper but physically on ground.”

He further disclosed that not less than 1,733 contractors were involved in the scam. While officials from the office of the Accountant- General of the Federation concurred to the submission made by the Auditor- General over NDDC’s contract awards and execution from 2008 to 2012, NDDC officials, led by their acting Managing Director, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, disagreed vehemently by saying that latest records available to the commission showed that N11 billion worth and not N70 billion projects were affected by the contract scam.

In a counter submission to the claims of the Auditor-General’s Office, Director of Finance in the NDDC, Jimoh Egbejule, told the committee that the commission had, on its own, audited report of the various projects awarded during the period under review, and discovered that the said scam affected N11 billion worth projects and not N70.4 billion as reported by the Office of the Auditor- General.

However, the contradictions in the submissions of the Auditor-General and the NDDC compelled committee, through its chairman, Senator Andy Uba, to adjourn the sitting for a month, mandating the two establishments to go and reconcile and bring back to the Senate a harmonised position. Uba said the public hearing was cut short to enable the Auditor-General’s Office and the NDDC reconcile their differences on whether it was N70 billion or N11 billion that was the real amount defrauded the commission by the contractors.

“There is need to stop this public hearing abruptly so as to allow the three parties time to sit down and harmonise their findings and reports on the subject matter. “Definitely this committee is not satisfied with what has happened, but we have to give them time to meet and harmonise whatever they can harmonise before coming back to us to present their updated reports upon which we can now do the proper probing without one agency saying it doesn’t have the reports the other is presenting and so on and so forth. ”

Unfortunately, the new Managing Director did not know anything, she didn’t understand what was going on. They didn’t carry her along, but I am glad that she’s willing to work, she’s ready to go through it with a fine toothcomb line by line with the Auditor General and Accountant General’s queries to make sure that there is prompt response to the queries. ”

But I am glad that today, in one month’s time, am sure we would know the truth about the whole differences,” Uba stated. Semenitari promised to go over the records properly within the one-month period, with a view to presenting before the Senate the true account of the story. ”