Renovation: Your response admittance of contract inflation, ENetSuD replies KWSG

By Ahmed Ajikobi
A Civil Society Organisation, Elite Network for Sustainable Development (ENetSuD) last night maintained that the contract for the renovation of the Ilorin Grammar School (IGS), Adeta was inflated with over N40m.
Following ENetSuD submission which reportedly jolted the government that irrelevant items worth N40,530,208 were added to the Bill of Quantity (BoQ) of the project, the supervising Ministry of Education and Human Development had issued a rejoinder accusing the civil group popular with its #FollowKwaraMoney activities of being political and reckless.
The government reaction was contained in a statement signed by the Permanent Secretary of the supervising ministry, Kemi Adeosun.
But, speaking to National Pilot last night, the Coordinator of ENetSuD, Dr. Abdullateef Alagbonsi noted that the state government has only justified the contract inflation with the response adding that more “clarifications” on the issue is coming.
Alagbonsi explained that from paragraph six of their (government) rejoinder, “You will notice that the Ministry admitted that the money we calculated as irrelevant items were statutory deductions.
“They also admitted that all those monies are payable to the State government through the Ministry of Finance as revenue.
“They have only admitted to the allegation. They admitted that they truly received the money. They have tried to justify that it is legal. But, we will give clarification on this in our next statement. We will make proper clarifications on the contract sum calculation in the coming days”, he noted.
On the accusation by the state government that ENetSuD is political, the coordinator said he would leave that for members of the public to judge.
“Concerning whether ENetSuD is political or not, we leave that for the members of the public to judge”, he added.
ENetSuD had alleged that the irrelevant items worth N40,530,208 were added to the Bill of Quantity (BoQ) for the renovation of Government High School, Adeta, Ilorin, thereby inflating the contract sum by almost 12%.
The CSO in a statement signed by its Chairman, Media and Publicity Committee, Saeed Tijjani, said “The Three Hundred and Sixty-One Million, Nine Hundred and Fifty-Seven Thousand, Four Hundred and Thirty-Nine Naira (N361,957,439) that was approved by the Kwara State Government as the contract sum of Government High School, Ilorin. ENetSuD told the Governor that irrelevant items worth N40,530,208 were added to the Bill of Quantity (BoQ) of the project, thereby increasing the contract sum with that amount.”
ENetSuD however said the contract inflation has been communicated to Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq via a letter dated 14th May, 2021 and signed by its Alagbonsi.
The letter reads in part, “Our re-calculation of the BoQ shows that the accurate contract sum was supposed to be Three Hundred and Twenty-One Million, Four Hundred and Twenty-Seven Thousand, Two Hundred and Thirty-Three Naira (N321,427,233) instead of the N361,957,439 approved by the Ministry for the LOTS 1 and 2 of the GHS project. This has led to an avoidable miscalculation of the contract sum as a result of the addition of irrelevant items worth Forty Million, Five Hundred and Thirty Thousand, Two Hundred and Eight Naira (N40,530,208).”