By Mumini AbdulKareem
Operatives of the Independence Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on Friday commenced tracking of constituency projects in Kwara State.
The team said they were tracking projects executed between 2015 and 2019 at the total contracts sum of N4.1 billion spread across the three senatorial districts of the state.
Some of the projects inspected during the team’s first outing on Friday were solar street lights in Edun, Isale Aluko, Pakata – Adeta, Oloje – Alfayaya, Popo-Giwa and Oloje Estate, all sited within Kwara central senatorial district.
Also visited in the same district were constituency public primary school projects in Oko-Erin, Ijoro, Adewole, Oke-Fomah, Anifowose and Gaa Saka among others.
According to a statement by the commission’s spokesperson, Rasheedat Okoduwa, “The exercise, which is scheduled to commence Tuesday 23rd June, 2020 in 16 states, namely: Cross River, Taraba, Ekiti, Ogun, Gombe, Nasarawa, Kebbi, Jigawa, Abia, Delta, Ebonyi, Niger, Rivers, Oyo, and Kaduna, will focus on health, education, water resources, agriculture and power sectors.
The tracking was carried out in collaboration with the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS), the Media and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) aimed at ensuring government gets value in the execution of public projects and improved delivery of social welfare services to the citizens.
Bar Luqman Shaffii and Bar Olaitan Taiwo Nurain both of CIRDEV Resource Centre and Mallam Tajudeen Hadi of Centre for Care of the Vulnerable and Development Initiative (CCDV) represented civil society organisations.
Officials of the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and other stakeholders were also part of the team.
The second phase of the tracking exercise by the anti-graft body is coming on the heels of the success recorded in the first phase of the constituency and executive projects tracking conducted in 12 states of the federation in 2019.
“Furthermore, the exercise forced contractors who hitherto had abandoned projects to return to site to complete them. ICPC is again set to take the exercise to states not covered in the pilot phase with the aim of ensuring that government gets value in the execution of public projects, and improved delivery of social welfare services to the citizens.
“The objectives of the tracking exercise include to investigate fraudulent procurement practices in the award of contracts for constituency and executive projects; make recoveries on projects or contracts confirmed to have been inflated or in which contractors under-performed or did not perform at all and track contracting companies for all statutory compliance among others.
The Commission in 2019 launched the pilot phase of the exercise in which it tracked projects performance from 2015 to 2019 in 12 states.
Successes from the pilot phase include the recoveries of tractors, ambulances, dialysis machines, huge sums of money, hundreds of tricycles, grinding machines, hospital equipment and other empowerment items from sponsors of the projects across the pilot states.
