Ossai Nicholas Ossai, chairman, House of Representatives’ ad-hoc committee on abandoned projects in the Niger Delta, on Monday threatened to cause the House to withhold future budgetary allocations to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) if it failed to account for previous allocations in the face of contract debts amounting to N1 trillion.
The N1 trillion is the amount owed contractors who have executed projects for the commission.
The ad hoc panel was said to have also found out that hundreds of billions of tax payers’ money were frittered away by contractors who took mobilisation fees but never went to sites.
The latest threat is coming amidst the failure of the NDDC management to honour invitations extended by the panel which is holding investigative hearings on the matter, leaving only debtor-contractors to make presentations before the committee.
Many of these contractors denounced the agency, saying that it was currently having a debt profile of N1 trillion from the projects that had been executed in the nine NDDC states.
Reacting to the scenario, the visibly infuriated Ossai noted that from the documents submitted to the committee, many of these contractors had completed their jobs and were still being owed long after they had executed jobs for the agency.
“For contractors who have finished their jobs and have not been paid, we are going to use our powers to ensure that provisions are made in the next budget for such, otherwise we may not pass it,” he said.
At the hearing, one of the contractors, Amb. Fubara Blessing, told the committee that so much money had been voted for the NDDC but that none of the contractors had been paid by the agency.
He advised the committee to ensure that it plugged all the loopholes that had been identified in the payment system to ensure that no contractor was paid a dime by the agency until all contracts awarded by it were completed to avoid creation of more abandoned projects.
Other contractors at the hearing also told the panel that most of the contractors didn’t go to the site despite having been mobilised for the jobs.
Oghogho, the Chief Executive Officer of Emeni of Atom Global Contractors Ltd, lamented that most women contractors were not given jobs to execute in the agency despite having qualifications to execute them.
The panel later adjourned the hearing to Wednesday, September 25, 2019 for more contractors to appear and give more testimonies, whilst hoping that the NDDC management would make appearance on that day.
