There seems to be more trouble for the Management of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) at the House of Representatives on the strength of queries by the Auditor General of the Federation over certain expenditures at the interventionist agency.
The ongoing probe of the activities of the commission by an ad-hoc committee of the House has already exposed many alleged shady deals at the commission.
Many Nigerians are calling for heads to roll over the development.
But a report from the office of the Auditor General of the Federation (AuGF) to the House Committee on Public Accounts on the finances of the commission points to more damning revelations coming .
The embattled leadership of the NDDC is opposed to call by the National Assembly that the commission be returned to the Presidency for supervision as was the case in the past.
The AuGF in its report on NDDC covering the period 2008 to 2012 raised questions over extra budgetary expenditure, award of emergency contracts and paying for unexecuted contracts.
The commission’s response is that the resort to the award of emergency contracts was to ensure that peace prevailed in the regime, and that there was no way it could identify projects such as roads and other infrastructures which might need emergency attention.
The AuGF queried the payment of N199.5 million by the commission for the supply of school desks in Delta State .
It said that there was no evidence that desks were supplied to schools in Ethiope West, Warri North, Isoko North, Sapele and Warri South local government areas of Delta despite payment to the contractors.
The commission claimed, in its response, that “4000 units of desks were awarded to this contractor and payments were carried out in two phases based on the final report received from Delta State Government through the supervising Directorate of Special Infrastructure in the governor’s office.
It added: “the supplies were merged with other ones from the remaining contractors to give a total of N40,000 dual school desks and redistributed to 49 schools by them independently according to the needs of these schools in the local government covered by the distribution.”
A scrutiny of the responses by The Nation shows that similar explanation was offered for all the locations.
The NDDC did not state whether the N199,500,000 covered the cost of the 40,000 desks distributed in the 10 locations, or the 4000 units awarded to each contractor.
To the questions on the use of unbudgeted contracts, the Commission explained that “as an interventionist agency it is mandated to intervene in critical areas.’
It added: “the project was awarded under a global budget emergency repairs, Corporate Social Responsibility and strategic access road… It is not feasible to determine roads, bridges or other infrastructure that may require our urgent attention…”
The AuGF also referred to alleged non-deduction of VAT from recently completed contracts for which mobilisation payments were made before 2008.
The value of the contacts was put at N936.77 million.
Responding, the Commission said “VAT is a tax burden to the commission and hence VAT due to contractors and consultants on projects, supplies and other services are calculated and paid to the relevant tax authority at the end of each month. It is not a deduction from contractor’s bill unless specified in the bill of quantity or suppliers invoice. It is an addition to project cost and hence, overpayment to contractors will not arise in any way because of VAT”.
On what the Auditor General called “unrecognized oil company’s contributions into final account N3.280 billion”, the Commission said “all contributions received from oil companies were paid directly into our Union Bank Account in Port Harcourt and the Off shore account in the United Kingdom and in recent years, a few were remitted into the First Bank account in Port Harcourt and the offshore account in the United Kingdom… the process of ascertaining the actual companies that made contributions into these banks could be difficult sometimes due to insufficient information which could, in few cases, lead to wrong posting.”
The Commission confirmed the transfer of fund from its Union Bank account to what the Auditor General called an undisclosed account of N3,118, 000,000.
It said: “the amount represents the naira proceeds of FX purchase of USD20,000,000 by Union Bank from the Commission. The actual total amount transferred was USD100,000,000 received by UBN in five tranches of N20M. This amount was to be credited into our account in five tranches, but was booked as one transaction, hence the need to reverse the N20,000,000 which amounted to N3,118,000,000”.
Although the audit query said it identified tax deduction on payment vouchers without evidence of remittance (N10,027,330,926.17, the commission insisted that “we have remitted all taxes to the appropriate authority.
It also identified multiple contract awards and payment of mobilisation, but the NDDC management said it was looking into this with a view to relocating one of the contractors to another site, but the mobilisation paid is safe since they are backed by bank guarantees.
It accused the commission of making unauthorised transfer of funds to the personal account of some individuals as well as well as some undisclosed accounts, saying that the sum of N40 million was transferred by the commission to the personal account of a former director.
It also said that the sum of N87, 331,331.11 was transferred from Access Bank account of the Commission to an undisclosed account.
However, in what appeared to be its explanation which did not addressed the issue raised, the Commission said “the balance arose from the domiciliary account opened at the early stage of the commission to pay contractors and other payables. Management at that time agreed with the bank to make it an interest bearing account to avoid idle funds in the bank. The cumulative interest on this account were added to the capital and rolled over from time to time to the benefit of the commission.”
NDDC FAULTS NASS RECOMMENDATION TO RETURN AGENCY TO PRESIDENCY
Meanwhile, NDDC has faulted the recommendations by the National Assembly to return the commission to the supervision of the Presidency.
The commission’s Director, Corporate Affairs, Charles Odili yesterday quoted NDDC Acting Executive Director, Projects, Dr. Cairo Ojougboh, as saying that the activities of some national lawmakers were constituting a stumbling block to the operations of the commission and should be critically examined for the country to move forward.
Ojougboh spoke when he paid a courtesy visit to the Asagba of Asaba, Obi Chike Edozien, at his palace, before heading to the Delta State Police Command, where the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu launched N450m COVID-19 equipment procured for the police by the commission.
“They want to take the NDDC back to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, which supervised it for about 15 years,” Ojougboh said.
“In those years, N3 trillion was committed and the SGF and the National Assembly didn’t see what was happening. Now that the NDDC has started to make progress, should it return to where it came from?
“I am 60 years old now. So if I don’t say the truth now, when will I say it? Your majesty, be assured that I have not stolen and I will not steal.”
At the equipment launch, Ojougbon stated that the COVID-19 intervention was meant to complement the efforts of the Federal Government in checking the spread of the Coronavirus disease.