Follow a 48 hours ultimatum by the House of Representatives to Minister of Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio to name lawmakers who are beneficiaries of NDDC contracts, the Executive Director (Projects) of the commission, Dr Cairo Ojugbo has provided the list of National Assembly members who were awarded contracts in NDDC between 2016 and 2019.
Dr. Ojougboh, said that between 2016 and 2019, emergency contracts were awarded to the tune of over N2trillion and supervised by the Senate and House of Reps committee chairmen on the NDDC, “and this is the list of all the awardees and how the contracts were distributed”, he said.
He said these contracts were solely supervised by the two committee chairmen, whom he did not name, without the knowledge of the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives. He said the Senate Committee chairman on NDDC alone collected 1000 jobs to himself, claiming that the jobs would be given to the Senators but he alone cornered all of them.
He said in 2016, the Senate Committee chairman of the commission reportedly told the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPE) to include N15billion project for him but after painstaking work to include the projects, on return to the Senator, he told them it was N150billion and not N15billion, noting that the BPE rejected the move.
“Let me say this. The Senate President and the Speaker are not aware of what the chairmen of the Senate and House Committees are doing in the National Assembly and members of the committees are also not aware. It is just a –one squad.
“Between 2016 and 2019, emergency contracts of over N2trillion were awarded under the supervision of the chairmen of both committees. In the list of awards, the chairman senate committee said the contracts were collected on behalf of the senate. The senate members are not aware. He collected 1000 of those jobs. He said he was going to give them to the senate. The records are there.
“These contracts were collected by a man called Nelson Agbamuche on behalf of the Senate. The immediate crisis now was a result of the budget. It was in 2016, the bureaucracy told us when we came in, that in 2016, 2017, 2018 there was no budget. The budget for 2019 was just passed.
“The Chairman of Senate Committee called the Bureau in 2016 and said look you need to include N15billion project for me. The bureaucracy said no problem. They worked it out. When they came back, the chairman said no, I didn’t say N15bn but N150bn. They went back and they couldn’t comply.
“The chairman now went back to the Bureau and said why don’t we award these projects under emergency? Why going through due process? That was why due process was circumvented. The commission now had a commitment of over N3trillion.
WATCH VIDEO BELOW
