FG Recovers N102bn from Inflated Contracts
By Uche Obike
The Federal Government has recovered N102 billion from inflated contracts through due process carried out by the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Budget, Dr. (Mrs.) Oby Ezekwesili, who is also the Unit Head, said in Lagos yesterday that "by our latest calculation, about N102 billion that would have been paid out of the public treasury representing no value added whatsoever but simply representing the inertia."
Ezekwesili who spoke on "Good Corporate Governance Practices from the View Point of Due Process," decried a situation where public sectors enter into a season of atrocities and incompetence, representing a leap of corruption and the total inability of our public sector to have the competences for determining current cost of government budget.
Delivering a lecture at the Corporate Summit and Dinner for Directors of Public companies organised by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ezekwesili said that cost determination is certainly a very technical activity.
This, she said, is also mundane at some levels because the market is opened for certain items of goods and services.
She also noted that there are so many other instances where the cost determination is within the framework of esoteric procurement inspired from test of technical knowledge for determining those points and our public sector becomes the test of the competence.
She disclosed that the unit had also sanctioned contracts due to certain discrepancies that run counter to the provision of the due process segment circular.
She said "corruption in Nigeria is not just a domestic or a global perfection problem, it is in truth an action challenge, it is in fact a greater enemy to our national development."
Ezekwesili added that corruption is a problem that represents a significant integrity challenge and it corrodes the economic, social, political and the entire value spectrum of our society.
"Any nation that takes to enthrone a new paradox of transparency and accountability as a replacement for a corruption order, must necessarily adopt institutional structure and system that will redefine the inefficient ways and manners in which activities were conducted in the past," she said.
She added that "in the case of federal government, transaction is captured by the almighty contract. It is indeed very clear why after many successive group of elite that took their turn on the commonwealth of the nation by using public power, resources and goodwill and public utility, that instrument of personal abuse and personal gain we are the worst for it."
Earlier, in his welcome address, the Commissioner for Operations, Mr. David Ogwu, explained that the apex regulatory body of the capital market, SEC decided to institute summit to create a regular and continuous interactive platform between the SEC and chieftains of public companies.
He said that it is also envisaged that the theme of programme will provide plank for crossfertilisation of ideas, towards engendering corporate growth and a buoyant economy.
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