The House of Representatives standing committee on water resources has written to the minister of water resources, Alhaji Mukhtar Shagari, alleging underhand dealings in the award of contracts for the drilling of boreholes under the N10 billion constituency projects, in which about 267 companies that have no rigs won their bids.
The committee is also protesting the award of the projects to 175 Abuja-based firms, out of 534 companies that qualified, even though proximity to site was part of the pre-qualification criteria.
In a letter to Shagari, dated December 9, and obtai-ned exclusively by Daily Trust in Abuja on Friday, the lawmakers alleged various infringements of the due process criteria and therefore ordered the water resources ministry to go back to the drawing board and re-assess the awarded firms.
The 2004 budget has provided a total of N10 billion for the construction of bore-holes in each of the 360 fed-eral constituencies. The projects were yet to take off less than three weeks to the end of the year.
Last week, the water resources ministry published a list of firms that qualified in the bidding for the projects.
But the lawmakers, acco-rding to the letter, signed by committee chairman, Abayomi Collins, expressed reservations about failure to do due diligence in the process.
The legislators’ grievances include: “the list does not take adequate cognisance of members’ recommendations to the ministry in respect of the zonal choices of contr-actors.
· The deployment of contractors to states/zone/federal constituencies do not reflect the Due Process Dep-artment’s recommendation as contained in their report of 15th November 2004, page 6, providing that contractors shall as much as possible be awarded contracts within the proximity of the River Basin Authority of their operation.
· For example in Borno State ten contractors out of the 13 are Abuja based.
· R & B contractor based in Akure is given one bore-hole in Bauchi State.
· About 175 of the listed contractors have been identified to be Abuja based.
· More than 50 percent of the listed contractors are known to have no rigs of their own to support their claims as tabulated on the Due Profess pre-qualification list of 534 contractors the basis on which they are recommended for the award of the present projects.
· The contractors have been listed on the basis of N13.5 million per member project as against the House Resolution for N20 million per member for 350 honourable members that indicated inte-rest on water projects as contained in our letter Ref: CHWR/MWR/016 dated September 15, 2004.”
Consequently, the committee demanded an authent-ication of the capabilities of the contractors, warning of an impending failure of the projects if this was not heeded to.
They asked Shagari to “ascertain the contractors’ claims to availability of rigs, in such a manner that down payments would only be released to contractors up to 50 percent on confirmation of rigs on site and commencement of the project.
“Maintain the House resolution for the provision of water projects for the listed 250 members in their respe-ctive constituencies at N20 million per member.”
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