FCT Minister Nasir el-Rufai yesterday in
Abuja said that he was accountable to President Olusegun Obasanjo and not the senate.
el-Rufai mAade the state-ment in response to reports that indicated that the Senate had asked the FCT Ministry to refund the N9 million paid to two special assistants attached to the minister’s office. The senate also indicted el-Rufai on his role at the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE).
The minister, who said that he was not bothered by the Senate’s pronounc-ement, said that nobody could intimidate him.
“Since my first encounter with the senate over the bribery issue, I know that they would try to find something wrong with me,” he added.
“ Quite frankly, I am not bothered. If the senators want an exercise in English Language they can continue saying what they want,” he said.
The senate committee on public accounts had during a plenary session on Wedn-esday indicted el-Rufai over the appointment of his two aides.
The committee ordered a refund to the coffers of the FCT ministry the more than N9 million paid to the aides as salaries.
The Senate had specifically declared illegal the employment of and payment of the amount to the two assistants.
The Senate held that the aides were neither employees of the World Bank nor were they cleared by Obasanjo.
The task of regularising and payment of ‘special assi-stants’ to el-Rufai was han-ded over to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).
One of the 10-point recommendations of the committee led by Sen. Mamman Ali was that the SGF should regularise the appointment and payment of remuner-ations to the special assist-ants in line with current government’s policy.
On his involvement in the convention on business integrity, el-Rufai said that on assuming office in July, Oba-sanjo mandated him to change the image of the ministry and improve on its bad repu-tation.
“The ministry at that time was known for corrupt prac-tices in the award of cont-racts, bad land administration and staffing.
“We spend about N50 billion annually on contracts in this ministry. We need to sign the convention which provides that the signatories would neither offer nor collect bribe in any contract dealing,” he said.
The minister, who stated that he got Obasanjo’s appr-oval to sign the convention, also said that any company given a contract of more than N50 million must sign the document.
He said that signing the convention by the contra-ctors was a guarantee that they would not offer bribe or any inducement neither would they permit anybody to do it on their behalf.
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