Nigeria's public transportation sector is one huge stretch of fraud involving multiple contract fraud cases and the connivance between contractors and government officials, a recent report on the sector released by the senate ad-hoc committee on transportation has shown.
From the indictment of past and present government officials, to the recommendation for the reinstatement of some, the report contains details of what its writers said was one of the nation's sprawling exhibit of official scam.
Between 1999 and 2009, the Ministry of Transportation, the report says, gave contracts for the construction and rehabilitation of 11, 591km of roads at a total cost of N1.7 trillion - about N87 million per km. With only 24% of the jobs done, close to 64% of the contract value has already been paid to the contractors.
In the ten-year period, work has been done on only 4,752 kilometres of roads for N633 billion. So far, the government has paid N47 million more than the agreed amount per kilometre.
The committee, headed by Heineken Lokpobiri, said officials within the sector, shortchanged the government of large sums of money, adding that, "there was no commensurate value for funds expended on the roads from 1999 to date."
Ayogu Eze, the Senate's spokesperson and a member of the committee, said the report took over a year to produce because it needed to be thorough and detailed.
During its 20-day sitting in 2008, the committee said it perused 532 written memoranda and listened to 248 presentations.
"We do not want sentiments this time, but the truth," said Mr. Eze, who incidentally moved a motion in 2008 that resulted in the investigation.
The committee said ministers and other senior officials of the ministries of transportation and Finance between 1999 and date, awarded multiple contracts for the same roads and paid for unapproved contracts.
"The members of the National Assembly have also introduced into the budget, road projects which are classified as state roads and are accordingly allocated funds for its implementation," the report said.
"Since such roads were classified as state roads, the Ministry of Works therefore refuses to so implement and the funds thereto were either illegally vired or returned to the treasury," it said.
The report also alleged that road construction contracts were awarded by the ministry without prior design.
It said contractors, who were usually selected on questionable grounds, liaised with the leadership of the ministries and reduced the scope of awarded contracts without an equivalent scaling down on the cost. In all cases, no one received any query from the internal audit. Now, the report has recommended that officials involved in the scam should be prosecuted.
Those the committee wants tried
The report has named some officials that should be prosecuted. They include ministers who headed the transportation ministry in the period under review.
Between June 2000 and October 2002, Tony Anenih headed the Ministry of Works and Transport. Adeseye Ogunlewe took over up till March 2006 and then Obafemi Anibaba, who stayed for just seven months, handed over to Cornelius Adebayo, the Minister of works until the end of Olusegun Obasanjo's tenure.
The four men, along with the ministers of State and Permanent Secretaries under them, have been recommended for prosecution.
The report made particular mention of a former Permanent Secretary, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, who had served under all the ministers save for Mr. Anenih. He was said to have crafted a means of splitting contracts to sizeable amounts, to bring the values within the approving authority of his office. With this, projects with single appropriation were awarded by him separately. This is besides awarding contracts to non-existing companies, the senators said.
Mr. Baba-Ahmed was also alleged, along with Mr. Anibaba and Mr. Ogunlewe, of not accounting for N214 million derived from the sale of bitumen.
Repeated attempts over one week to reach any of the past officials for comments failed.
Mr. Anenih, made no response to the latest report, although he swiftly denied owing Spring Bank N2.605 billion, less than 24 hours after the Central Bank of Nigeria released the names of non-performing bank debtors on Wednesday.
Last Thursday, he denied any link to Mettle Energy and Gas Limited, the company which the central bank alleged was owing the bank. "I feel pained that people who have worked to the levels of command and leadership are made targets of press war, mischief and ridicule," he had said.
Ghost companies got the jobs
Against contract management rules, more than 46% of the companies were not registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission at the time of receiving their contracts, the report said.
"The bidding processes in the Ministry of Transportation were mere facades to fulfil all righteousness, as the contractors to be awarded the contracts had been pre-determined," the report said.
The senators, however, said the main danger was the relationship between the ministry officials and the contractors whom they are supposed to supervise.
In the past decade or so, the ministry had no fixed mobilization fee which, by law, should be 25%. Some companies were given 25%, while some took 12 % of the total contract cost.
The engineering staff of the ministry were accused by the report as corrupt and lacking in technical expertise. Yet they granted clearances to contractors when the jobs were far from finished. The report said officers who refused to join the gravy train were re-deployed to administrative department. It cited the case of a certain D. K Jime, whom the senators said should be recalled to his former job.
The report also slammed former officials of the Ministry of Finance and Bureau of Public Procurement (Due Process office), said to have provided funding and clearance for the unappropriated projects.
It also indicted the immediate past Minister of Transportation and Works, Diezani Allison-Maduekwe, who was said to have paid more than N1.2 billion into the private account of a company called Digital Toll Gates Limited, against the written advice of the Due Process Office.
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