The House of Representatives has mandated a committee to investigate allegations of plans to divert the recently recovered $308 million Abacha loot into private accounts using Julius Berger Nigeria Ltd. as a conduit.
The Federal Government had said the money will be used to expedite work on the Lagos–Ibadan expressway, Abuja–Kano expressway and the second Niger Bridge.
New Telegraph learnt that the works committee, led by Hon. Abubakar Kabir Abubakar (APC, Kano), would commence investigations into the allegations this week.
Recall that the latest Abacha loot has been dogged by controversy as a few weeks ago, there were reports that the federal government was planning to pay $100 million from the money to Kebbi State governor, Senator Abubakar Bagudu.
Bagudu is alleged to be part of a network controlled by former Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha that “embezzled, misappropriated and extorted billions from the government of Nigeria from 1993 to 1998.”
Although, the Federal Government had, through the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Mallam Abubakar Malami denied entering into any agreement to pay Bagudu or any other third party from the recovered funds, the House has allegedly discovered another plot to pilfer the money.
The investigation of this allegations is coming on the heels of a similar assignment given the works committee last week, to probe allegations of contractual malfeasance to the tune of N206 billion, involving the ongoing second Niger bridge project.
It will be recalled that the House had, last Thursday through a motion of national importance sponsored by Hon. Ifeanyi Chudi Momah (APGA, Anambra), approved the probe of Julius Berger involving allegations of $206 million contract malfeasance.
The House in adopting the motion, had alleged that phase 1 was awarded on Public Private Partnership (PPP) basis and 2(a) and 2(b) of the 2nd Niger Bridge, were to be awarded as traditional contracts at the rate of N118 billion, the governmental allegedly breached the deal and awarded same to Julius Berger at the whopping cost of N206 billion.
“Phase 2 of the job was to be awarded as design, build, finance, operate and transfer basis under PPP scheme, phase 2a and 2b were to be awarded as traditional contracts, the same job, has now been awarded to Julius Berger for N206 billion, as against the cost of N118 billion valued by BPP,” the House said.
The motion advised that “A Swiss challenge bid process, ought to be adopted to avoid a situation of potential conflict of interest.”
The House lamented that all projects handled by Julius Berger, under the SUKUK arrangement, were defective and proceeding at snail speed.
The lawmakers further alleged that there was evidence of slow pace of work on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Abuja-Kano-Zaria-Kano Expressway and the 2nd Niger Bridge, leading to traffic and deaths.
“Julius Berger is involved in all these three critical projects and other major road projects under SUKUK. All these projects are lagging behind schedule, which brings to fore, Julius Berger’s capacity to handle the projects, simultaneously,” the motion stated.
The House accused the government of flouting sections of the Public Procurement Act and denying Nigerians the required transparency, due process and judicious application of resources for the contract.
“The use of direct procurement (Section 42 of the public procurement act), in awarding these projects, as against the opening competitive bidding (section 24 of the public procurement act), have deprived Nigerians of transparency, due process and potential to save money”.
The committee is to also “investigate the level of work done on Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Abuja-Kano-Zaria-Kano expressway and 2nd Niger Bridge, in order to determine if the amount disbursed so far, has a commensurate value with the job done till date”, and to “determine if there is a potential conflict of interest in awarding the contracts to a single contractor”, and to also “determine if the contract sums have been inflated”.
New Telegraph reports that these projects were designed to be funded by Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF), domiciled at Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), for effective funding.
As at December 2019, N19,520,949,317.16 was released to section 1 of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, N80,242,079,039.46 to the 2nd Niger Bridge, N50,856,044,301.27 to Abuja-Kano-Zaria-Kano Expressway, totalling N150,619,072,657.89.
