Of Borno PDP and power sector probe

Ali SheriffJames Bwala reports the recent visit of the Honourable Ndudi Elumelu-led House of Representatives Committee on Power and Steel to Borno State and how the revelations it made have put a moral burden on the state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Last week, a shocker was revealed in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, by the chairman House of Assembly Committee on Power and Steel, Honourable Ndudi Elumelu, during a courtesy call on the state governor, Dr. Ali Modu Sheriff. It was that N8 billion white elephant project was discovered in the state. Following the declaration, the Nigerian Tribune gathered that Borno State citizens began to ask questions, placing question marks on the credibility of some top membership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who were said to have had some kind of romance with the immediate past Chief Olusegun Obasanjo-led government. It is believed that such politicians would probably have had interest in the said project for Borno and other neigbouring states. Besides the money involved, the project was said not to have been found at the site.

While speaking during the courtesy call, Elumelu said it was a continuation of the mandate given to his committee, following Honourable Mohammed Ndume’s motion on January 31 where he prayed the House to look into the issue with regard to the huge sums of money expended on the power sector from 1999 to 2007.

According to him, during the public hearing held by the committee, a lot of issues came up and submission were made by contractors, consultants, ministries of power and steel, finance, the director general of due process, the accountant general of the federation, auditor general of the federation, attorney general of the federation, the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and executives of other government parastatal agencies who appeared before the committee.

He said after the public hearing, the committee felt it would be unfair if it should use the submission made by those who appeared before it to put down its recommendation and take it to the floor of the House without actually going round to ascertain the claims by those individuals.

Giving the committee’s findings on its tour of the North East zone, he said, “we are in Borno State because there are some projects that have been alleged to be on-going in Maiduguri and some other areas. One of such is the 332KV sub-station which is being handled by Channel Engineering which is valued at N1.8 billion out of which N733,714,905.42 has been released.

“The contract was awarded in March 2006 and the contractor was mobilised on June 29, 2006; that is to say that they put the money in a fixed account and they were meant to complete the project in 2007. But as I speak to you today, from what we saw at the site, there is nothing to convince us that they are serious contractors.

“You can see the kind of atrocities that are being committed to our nation by the so-called contractors in the name of executing power projects.

“We also have another 330KV line which should be from here to Damaturu through to Gombe valued at the cost of N5.7 billion. So far, N4.2 billion has been released to the contractor, News Engineering. As a matter of fact, the contract has elapsed; they were supposed to have handed over everything since last year. Again, that contract, we understand, is nothing to write home about because we saw that they have done nothing; the site is just ordinary ground.”

While speaking on projects inspected at local government areas, Elumelu told Governor Sheriff that the committee members had also gone round some of the areas where they were told that contract for one 1x7.5MPA substation each at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Maiduguri; Biu, Bama and Lassa were situated, all valued at the cost of N1.4 billion. He said the contractors were claiming that they had not been mobilised, but added that the committee had seen instances where such claims were made and when the committee checked its records, it was found out that they had been paid.

For those whose claim of having not been paid could not be ascertained from records, he said when the committee got back to Abuja, it would check with the Accountant General of the Federation and the CBN, adding that if the committee found anything contrary, it would not accept the claim that they had not been mobilised.

“We have another record of N1.21 billion out of which N540 million has been released; N507 million is yet to be paid, but because of their claim that they had done the job, we went ahead to categorise them as unutilised under 2006 budget. Those projects were to be at Shuwari, Okko, Tampul, Bama Sugmutari, Yau Lawanti, Dala-Alamdari, Dipchari, Baha, Mikan, Kuva, Ngasam, Geidamn, Kida, Shaffa, Humari, Abadam, Gamadadi Bitta, Finadam, Ndirauna and Shaltikam. These are projects many of which are very important. I told the press to help us to report it, because what we are seeing is a total rape on tax payers’ money,” he said.

In his response, Governor Sheriff said a lot of money had been sunk into the power sector in the country, agreeing that with the on-going probe, the committee was doing Nigerians proud. He said Nigeria’s major problem currently was the power sector, without which he said nothing meaningful would happen, especially for business operators.

The governor said the intervention by the committee to tell the world that so much money had been expended but fell into “the hands of bandits” was a welcome step. He, therefore, urged the committee to continue in the good step towards bringing the erring contractors to book.

“Governments are usually blamed that nothing has been done and nothing has come out, but real money has come out and this people took it and sat on it and their conscience is telling them nothing. I am sure that with this exercise, nobody will take public fund and keep it for himself because there is no more escape route for such people. Anybody given public fund to work with should make sure that such work is done,” he said.

Expressing shock, at the revelations, the governor said “any time we give statement in the state, we say that there is no Federal Government presence in our state at all. Even as a governor, I am hearing this for the first time that over N5 billion has been spent in my state since my assumption of office. All this while, I had assumed that the Federal Government had not done any job in our state and that had always been our statement. I am saying this with all conviction because I have not seen anything. Now, you are telling us that N4 billion was paid to a contractor for a certain project but nothing has been done. It would have been better if the ministries responsible had communicated to the state government that they are doing certain projects in respective states so that the states’ commissioners in charge of such sector would be writing periodic report to inform them about what is happening to their projects. But this was not done; we didn’t know, therefore, we were always saying there was nothing taking place in our state.”

Worried by that revelation, citizens of Borno State have been saying that since the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) is not the government at the centre, the question of whether some ANPP members were involved should not be raised.

According to an analyst, “since there is no way, as far as politics in Nigeria is concerned, that a member or some top members of the ANPP would be given such contract, especially for Borno State where ANPP is the ruling party, ANPP members cannot be accomplices in this matter.”

Other commentators who spoke with the Nigerian Tribune agreed that there was no way such contracts would be awarded that some top members of the PDP would not be involved or benefit from them. They maintained that the question should, therefore, be put to the PDP and its membership in the state.

A supporter of the ANPP in Maiduguri, Mustapha Karubein, in an interview with the Nigerian Tribune, argued that since the revelation, the question he had continued to ask was: Who are those PDP members involved in these contracts, if there are any?

“The so-called celebrated PDP men should come out now to speak on these atrocities done in Borno State. At least, we now have the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and a top minister from the state,” he said