The House of Representatives’ Ad hoc Committee on Abandoned Projects in the Niger Delta says that a total of 1,723 contractors collected the sum of N70.495 billion without mobilizing to site.

At last week’s sitting of the panel, the Auditor General of the Federation,  Mr. Anthony Ayine had disclosed that N64.4 billion was wasted by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) as mobilization fees on abandoned projects in the region.

However, the Accountant General of the Federation’s Report which was submitted to the committee shows that 1,723 contractors never mobilized to their respective sites after collecting N70,495,993,761 billion. The report also indicated that 90 percent of the contracts were awarded between 2011 and 2012.

“The report above excluded those contractors that collected mobilization and reported to the site but with insignificant achievement before abandoning the projects. This equally excluded those who the commission has declared their projects as stalled.

“It is a common practice for the Commission’s contractors to collect mobilization and refuse to move to site.

“The blame for this should not only go to the contractors but equally to the management of NDDC, who awarded contracts that were not in existence, that is contracts without identification of the site, resulting to non-reporting to site by the contractor.

“Besides the above, it was also observed that about 50 percent of the contractors who claimed they have executed their various contracts specifications and completed with supporting engineers valuation certificates were later found out by the team that some merely collected money for work not executed,” the report read.

Details of the contracts show that out of the N17.641 billion contract sum in Abia State, N2.027 billion was paid for 32 projects. In Akwa Ibom, N4.229 billion was paid out of N31.681 billion contract for 64 projects.

In Bayelsa, N4.970 billion was paid out of N27.647 billion contract for 80 projects, N2.065 billion paid out of N13.451 billion for 29 projects in Cross River State while Delta has 99 projects for which N7.836 billion has been paid out of N31.765 billion. 

N2.065 billion was paid out of N13.927 billion for 51 projects in Edo State ; N1.859 billion paid out for 33 projects out of N13.184 billion for 33 projects in Imo while Ondo and Rivers have 50 and 106 projects for which N6.173 billion and N13.146 billion have been paid out of N29.977 billion and N56.717 billion contracts respectively.

The report  added: “In the auditor’s opinion, this ugly trend will continue in the system in as much as the same class of people were recycling in the management and board of the commission.”