SAN FRANCISCO, January 26, (THEWILL) – The Senate has mandated its committee on Public Procurement to carry out a comprehensive investigation into alleged irregularities in award of multi-billion road contracts by the Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP, giving the committee one week to turn in its report for the consideration.
The upper chamber took this decision on Thursday following the consideration and adoption of a motion on “Irregularities in the award of contracts by the BPP” sponsored by Senator Dino Melaye (APC Kogi West), who expressed concern over alleged irregularities in the award of contracts by the BPP.
Melaye told his colleagues that the BPP in contravention of the BPP Act, went beyond its mandate to award the contracts to companies not recommended by the procuring entity for instance, “the procuring entity recommended Deux Project Limited for the rehabilitation of Numan-Jalingo road for N11.7 billion, the BPP awarded the contract to Rock Bridge Construction Ltd at N12.8 billion”.
He added that whereas the ministry recommended the rehabilitation of Nenwe-Nomeh-Nburubu-Nara road project to Don- Machris Global Resources Ltd at N5.1 billion, the BPP awarded it to Arab Contractors Nig. Ltd at N6.4 billion.
The senator noted that although the recommended contract sums by the Ministry were already high, and ought to have been reviewed downward, the BPP went ahead and reviewed the contracts upwards and subsequently awarded the contracts to companies not recommended by the procuring entity in violation of Section 19 of the Public Procurement Act.
While stating that he chose only two instances to buttress alleged abuse of the BPP Act, he prayed the Senate to investigate the anomaly in the interest of due process.
While seconding the motion, the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu called for caution because of technicalities involved in the construction of roads and bridges.
According to him, “I believe that if our committee goes into this, they will find out the details of what happened but the point I need to make here is that our procurement process needs to be sensitive to our season.
“Presently we are in dry season, so if contracts were awarded for road construction I believe that whatever investigation we are doing should not prejudice the continued performance of that contract because if we do, it means that by the time we enter the rainy season this people will not be able to work again.
“In the past some of our investigation will stalled the work of government because if you recall the issue of the second runway was stalled because of the investigation we had here.
“The same thing happened to power sector reform. We are rolled back a couple of years because of the investigation in the House of Representatives carried out in the power sector.
“My caution here is that while we are investigating, it should be without prejudice to the continued performance of these contracts so that we can take advantage of the dry season to ensure that our roads are repaired.”
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