By House Of Reps Probe N70bn Payments To Contractors Over NDDC Projects
The lower chamber of the National Assembly, the House of Representatives on Friday commenced an investigation into the payments of over N70bn by the Niger Deltans Development Commission to about 1,773 non-performing contractors.
According to an audit query by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation, the payments were made between 2008 and 2012 but till date, none of the contractors has reported to site for duty.
The probe was kick-started last Friday when the House Committee on Public Accounts summoned the Acting Managing Director of NDDC, Professor Kemebrandikumo Pondei and questioned him about all defaulting contractors who were paid mobilization fees and never reported to carry out the projects till date, even as some projects were scheduled to be completed in 6months.
It was however gathered that some of the contractors have refunded the NDDC, but out of the over N79bn, only N19bn is yet to be recovered as claimed by the Acting Director of Internal Audit 9f NDDC, Mr Itu Eno Ubi. The Committee also requested Prof Pondei to provide statements of account showing the funds recovered from some of the contractors.
Mr Ubi who represented the Acting MD disclosed that most of the contractors carried out the projects as some were affected by insecurity. He added that the Commission is still in the process of recovering from the remaining contractors.
Speaking at the meeting, Chairman of the House Committee, Hon Wole Oke criticised the NDDC for failing to address issues raised in the audit queries issued by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation between 2008 and 2012.
Hon Oke said, “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 (of the commission) has rendered the accounts up to 2018. We stopped at 2018 due to the coronavirus pandemic. But clearly, there are issues here and there.”
