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Leke Baiyewu, Abuja
The Senate on Wednesday grilled the management of the Niger Delta Development Commission, which failed to provide all the details of its finances and contracts as requested by the lawmakers.
The Managing Director, NDDC, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, who led other management staff of the commission before the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, however, apologised for the irregularities, promising that additional details would be provided at the expected time.
The committee, chaired by Senator Andy Uba (Anambra-South), requested that the NDDC must provide evidence of approval for 1,691 contracts, which were awarded between 2014 and 2016. He said the commission provided evidence of approval for only six contracts.
Members of the panel, who picked holes in the documents provided by the NDDC, argued that the cost of each of the contracts, duration, amount disbursed to contractors, addresses of contractors, among others, were missing.
The committee consequently directed the NDDC to furnish it with the evidence of approval of all the contracts and relevant certificate of no objection from the Bureau of Public Procurement within seven days.
“This committee, and by extension the Senate, is not happy with this vague report before us, particularly on contract award, date of award, level of execution, names of contractors, etc,” Uba stated.
Responding, Semenitari said, “We will try to provide the details as requested. There were errors in the past about award of contracts and we are trying to correct and improve on our standards.”
The committee also asked why the NDDC operated 22 accounts with 22 different banks before the implementation of the Treasury Single Account, as against the four approved for a commission like the NDDC.
The lawmakers therefore requested that the NDDC should furnish it with the names of the banks, after which they announced that the banks would be written to request for the statement of accounts operated by the commission.
The committee also criticised the NDDC for its huge tax debt of N28.7bn with the Federal Inland Revenue Service, while ordering the commission to begin the processes of offsetting the debt.
Semenitari explained that the N28.7bn tax debt arose from the N23bn already owed before her appointment.
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