Contract Scam On Power Sector Worse Than Robbery - NLC

Karimatu Abdullahi, Kaduna - 22.03.2008

The Kaduna State Chairman of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Danladi Bissalah, has said that the on-going revelations before the House of Representatives Committee Public Hearing on Power and Steel were more than day light robbery.

He insisted that a situation where billions of Naira had been spent without commensurate improvement in the power sector was not only tragic but criminally rooted. The labour leader, who spoke at the official inauguration of the multi-million naira office complex constructed by Nigeria Union of Teachers, (NUT) Endwell Scheme in Kaduna at the weekend, said that it is difficult to believe that contractors could collect funds without executing the project on which such money was made for.

He said the monumental fraud in the power sector was an indication that the immediate past government of former president Obasanjo was full of corruption that is worse than armed robbery, adding that the culprits should not only be made to refund the monies but should as well be punished.

“The intention of such people is to kill our nation and our common wealth and as such they should be executed before they kill our nation,” he said. Comrade Bissalah therefore called on President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to deal ruthlessly with those involved in this criminal and shameless act so as to serve as a deterrent to others, stressing that the ability of the president to punish those involved in the contract scam would go a long way to tell about his desire to fight corruption in the country.

Earlier in his speech, the Chairman Board of Trustees of the NUT Endwell Scheme, Mr. Mataimaki Tom Maiyashi, explained that the scheme was established to cater for workers in the state who lost their jobs due to irrational rationalisations, especially during the long period of military rule.

He disclosed that it would take only 72 hours for benefits to be computed and paid to a beneficiaries under the scheme; adding that this was a sharp contrast to what was obtained in the civil service where, “your first contention on retirement is high blood pressure due to the slow culture of the bureaucracy”.