The House of Representatives has commenced an investigation into the N70.495 billion said to have been paid by Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to 1,773 contractors as mobilisation fees between 2008 and 2012 without they executing the contract or reporting to site.
Chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts, Wole Oke, while speaking at the hearing directed the NDDC acting Managing Director, Prof. Pondei Kemerbrandikumo to provide details of the projects and list of all defaulting contractors along with a statement of accounts showing the recovered funds as alluded to by the NDDC acting Director of Internal Audit, Mr Itu Eno Ubi.
Ubi had argued only N19 billion is yet to be recovered from the contractors after the Auditor General of the Federation had issued 219 audit queries to the NDDC.
According to the audit report, 90% of the contractors engaged by the Commission collected the mandatory mobilisation fees for contracts that ought to be completed within 6 months without reporting to the site between 2011 and 2012, The Nation reports.
The Audit report said further during the Auditor General of the Federation’s investigation, 60% of the contractors made claims that they have completed the projects, claims he said cannot be verified.
The report also alleged some of the contractors who defaulted in executing their projects were being recycled by the Commission, adding that the action taken by NDDC management has done more harm to the system over the years.
In its recommendations, the Auditor General of the Federation asked the House Committee on Public Accounts to ensure that the NDDC management explains the rationale behind the contractor’s failure to execute the projects after collecting the mobilization fees, the status of the bonds signed by the contractors and explain why appropriate actions should not be applied to the contractors.
However, representative of the NDDC acting Managing Director, Itu Eno Ubi, explained that the said funds were released to the banks that guaranteed the contractors, stressing the funds have been recovered from some of the erring contractors leaving the balance of N19 billion outstanding as against the N70 billion outstanding alluded to in the audit queries.
He disclosed the management of NDDC has made frantic efforts to recover the outstanding money from the banks, saying that some of the contractors were unable to complete the projects due to the general insecurity situation in the oil producing region.
Oke frowned at the failure of the Commission to address various issues raised in the audit queries between 2008 and 2012, saying “what the Auditor-General did was to invoke section 4 of the Audit Act to discover the anomalies in the NDDC.
“The main issue is whether the Interim Management Committee has rendered the account up to 2018. We stopped at 2018 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but clearly there are issues here and there.”
