The House of Representatives has beamed its searchlight on contracts awarded for the all-important East-West Road in the Niger Delta region – and is unhappy with what it saw.

The House on Monday demanded details of all the contracts awarded by the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, many of which have not been executed.

The Reps accused the ministry officials of hoarding vital information and gave the ministry a 48-hour deadline to produce the details of the N323 billion contract on the dualisation of the East-West road, which begins in Rivers State.

The amount involved in the contract was disclosed at an investigative hearing by the committee with officials of the ministry, led by the Permanent Secretary, Mr. William Nwankwo Alo.

After listening to Alo’s presentation, the committee said that the ministry had been denying the Lower Chamber of the National Assembly the opportunity to see the project’s contract agreement and relevant documents on the release of funds, the current state of the project and outstanding payments.

But Alo claimed that the agreement was within the lawmakers’ reach.

At their last meeting, the committee had demanded the documents, which the ministry did not forward to the panel.

Following the committee’s insistence on the new deadline, Alo said that the 48-hour ultimatum was too short for him to reproduce the documents in 40 copies.

He said that the sensitive nature and volume of the documents made the task very difficult.

Alo said: “As I speak with you, there is no electricity in the ministry to reproduce the documents for you in 48 hours.

“We will therefore plead for two weeks, considering the volume of the documents you are asking for and their quality. It’s not something we can do in a hurry. We are not also expected to take government documents to commercial centres for production and reproduction.”

The Committee Chairman, Hon. Kingsley Chinda, insisted on the directive and announced the members’ willingness to conduct an assessment tour of the project after their next meeting with the officials to ensure that the committee would not be misled by the report of the ministry.

Although the next hearing was slated for Monday next week, a member of the committee, Hon. Gabriel Onyenwife (APGA-Anambra) wondered why the ministry mobilised the contractors handling the four sections of the road up to N312 billion, leaving N11 billion as outstanding, when the projects had not been completed.

Meanwhile, the 2013 audit report of the Auditor-General of the Federation has indicted the ministry for discrepancies in the handling of the contracts, where only 24 percent had been done despite the fact that over 50 percent mobilisation fee had been paid.

Alo however insisted that the current completion statuses of the contracts were at 91 percent, adding that the ministry followed due process in the awards and payments approved by the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

•Sourced from The AUTHORITY.

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