Govt plans special court for failed contractors
From Madu Onuorah (Abuja)
FOR failed contractors in the country, day of reckoning is near as the Federal Government is set to bring them to book.
Essentially, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) yesterday asked the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mohammed Uwais for designated special high courts to handled the speedy trial of failed contractors and other related financial crimes.
The order came just as a total of N7,086,216,527, representing the total sum of all failed contracts, are to be recovered from contractors that failed to execute their jobs.
A breakdown of the figures shows that the highest amount of N6,290,164,681 failed contracts came from the Ministry of Works, N1,321,500 from the Ministry of Science and Technology; N2,372,973 from Defence and N792,357,373 from the Ministry of Education.
This is the first phase of the contract review undertaken by the Inter-ministerial Implementation Committee led by the Minister of Works, Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe.
Although 65 contracts were reviewed in the Ministry of Works, 11 in the Ministry of Defence, six in the Ministry of Science and Technology and 49 in the Ministry of Education.
Stating the rationale for the establishment of the committee, Minister of Information and National Orientation, Chief Chukwuemeka Chikelu told State House Correspondents after the council meeting presided over by Vice President Atiku Abubakar that " one of the major problems that this administration decided to confront was that of abandoned projects.
"A lot of projects across the country for which mobilisation fund had been paid were abandoned."
Ogunlewe later said: "The council considered the report of the committee on the failed and non-performing contracts between 1976 and 1998. We have done an extensive review of the white paper. We have invited contractors. We have now reported to the council because we are expected to report every six months.
"We have reviewed from the Ministry of Works, 65 contracts; Ministry of Science and Technology, six; Ministry of Defence, 11; and Ministry of Education, 49. In all, almost all the contractors have refused to pay back.
"The council has now directed the Attorney General to look at the possibility of designating some courts to try the contractors because it's a lot of money. This administration is committed to retrieve the money."
Chikelu added that not all the contractors have the same problem.
His words: "There are all kinds of problems. Some got mobilisation but did not continued work. Some had mobilisation, did some work but the agency was unable to continue paying them. It is a total mix up. Whatever the dispute, the important thing is that the Federal Government is making a clear statement that it would not be business as usual.
"If you have a contract to execute for the Federal Government for which you have been paid you are expected to deliver. And if you don't deliver, you go through the judicial process."
The Information Minister added: "What the FEC has requested the Attorney General to do is that the Chief Justice of Nigeria or the Chief judges of various Federal High Courts be requested to designate a court within their own judicial circuit to handle these cases of failed contracts.
"We are not talking of establishing new courts outside the existing judicial system, but requesting that certain courts should handle this matter, so that they can be expeditiously discharged".
According to him, the committee is currently considering the case of failed contracts in the Ministries of the Federal Capital Territory, Internal Affairs, Agriculture and Rural Development, Commerce, Transport and Petroleum Resources.
The implementation committee, however, noted that it had become difficult to trace defaulting contractors, as they no longer operate from the addresses they gave to the contracting ministries.
"And in order to circumvent the problem, the committee is using the information provided by the Corporate Affairs Commission to trace the subscribers and directors of the companies involved," the minister said.
The panel also noted that "matters are made a bit more difficult by the attitude of some of the affected ministries. Some of them have failed to respond to request for informations while the response of others have been very skimpy.
