Six senior officials of the Rural Electrification Agency have been arraigned before a Federal Capital Territory, High Court, Abuja, for awarding contracts to the tune of N5.2bn to companies allegedly belonging to them.
An official of the media and publicity department of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Wilson Uwujaren gave the names of the officials as Samuel Gekpe, Abdullahi Aliyu, Simon Kirdi Nanle, Lawrence Kayode Orekoya, Abdulsamad Jahun and Kayode Oyedeji.
The accused were said to have abused some provisions of the Procurement Act in awarding the contracts to themselves.
An assistant procurement officer with the Bureau of Public Enterprises, Mr. Naisr Bello, told the court presided over by Justice Adebunkola Banjoko that the officials did not carry out any tender exercise on the contracts they awarded.
Bello, who was led in evidence by the EFCC counsel, Kemi Pinheiro, added that following a Procurement Audit Report, the suspects merely selected contractors rather than carry out tender exercise and evaluation for both the grid and solar contracts.
He said, “None of the companies awarded the contracts were on the list of pre-qualified companies forwarded by the ministry. The projects were also not advertised in any of the national dailies as required by the Public Procurement Act.
“A selective tendering process was adopted for the procurement. Though companies were pre-qualified based on the six geo-political zones, REA failed to provide the criteria and scores of the pre-qualification exercise.
“Contractors were paid 100 per cent of the contract sum in two installments of 15 per cent and 85 per cent respectively even though most of the companies provided advance payment guarantee.”
Bello explained that available reports indicated that one Miss Uduak Israel Akpan signed the contract documents and collected cheques on behalf of nine companies that benefited from the contracts.
He said the nine companies had their offices in Asaba, Delta State and the same telephone number on their letterhead.
They were awarded 21 of the 45 contracts to the tune of N842,272m out of the N1.624bn contract sum.
Bello was later cross examined by counsel for the accused persons led by Paul Erokoro, SAN.
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