Oduah’s Airport Upgrade And Rehabilitation Is A Scam -

Stella Oduah’s Airport Upgrade And
Rehabilitation Project An Elaborate Scam -
Air Transport Workers Allege
Newly renovated Murtala Mohammed
Airport ln Lagos is leaking
By SaharaReporters, New York
As investigations progress into Aviation
Minister Stella Adaeze Oduah’s scandalous
purchase of two BMW armored cars that
cost N255 million, members of the National
Union of Air Transport Employees have
called for a proper probe of the Aviation
Ministry’s airport rehabilitation projects,
describing them as an elaborate scam.
The embattled minister initiated extensive
airport rehabilitation and remodeling
projects that have gulped billions of naira.
Earlier, SaharaReporters had reported that
the air workers union had written a petition
to the Nigerian Senate in July. The petition
portrayed the airport rehabilitation projects
as a cesspool of corruption.
In the petition, the union accused the
minister of personally benefiting from two-
phase projects designed for the remodeling
of eleven airports in the country. The
petition alleged that the minister used N7
billion from the Federal Government’s 2012
appropriations as well as another N1 billion
from internally generated revenue of the
Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN),
an agency under the Aviation Ministry.
Ms. Oduah had reportedly asked the
Ministerial Tenders Board to approve her
plan to use a two-phased rehabilitation
exercise. The petition alleged that the
minister had awarded consultancy jobs to
three crony firms in the last quarter of 2011
without advertisement or evidence of “no
objection” from the Bureau of Public
Procurement (BPP). Instead, the minister
allegedly awarded the contracts with the
confidence that she would retroactively
obtain the certificates of “no-objection” for
the crony consultancy firms that received
the contracts.
The N255.7 million contracts went to
Messrs. Ngonyama Okpanum and
Associates; Messrs. Design Union
Consulting Limited, and Messrs. Triad
Associates Limited, which received N99
million, N60.9 million, and N95.5 million
respectively.
The air transport workers alleged that no
comprehensive reports on the consultancy
services were ever presented during any
meeting at the tenders’ board level.
After getting away with the questionable
methods for awarding consultancy
contracts, the minister reportedly boasted
at a tenders’ board meeting that she had
obtained President Goodluck Jonathan’s
approval to adopt a selective tender
method for determining the contractors to
execute the upgrade and rehabilitation
projects at the eleven airports in 2012.
The petitioners said Ms. Oduah cajoled the
tenders’ board to approve her
predetermined list of companies for the
contracts. In a letter which Ms. Oduah used
FAAN to write to the BPP, the minister cited
“urgency” as her basis for seeking selective
tender method for the upgrade and
rehabilitation of airports.
“Rehabilitation and upgrade do not qualify
as emergency that call for urgency,” wrote
the airport workers in their petition
obtained by SaharaReporters.
An executive of the Tenders’ Board told
SaharaReporters that the minister and her
associates “said it was for urgency that they
elected the selective tender method and
stipulated six months [as the duration of
the projects], but it is now over two years
and you can see their basis for selective
tender is defeated. This is properly a case
of fraud.”
Citing a violation of section 40-42 of the
Public Procurement Act, the workers argued
that selective tendering would be justifiable
for the award of contracts that require
some peculiar
expertise available only to a select few
companies.
“Renovation of terminal buildings falls short
of this requirement, but BPP approved it
for Selective Tendering (notwithstanding),”
the petition said.
SaharaReporters also saw a letter written
by BPP to FAAN giving approval for the
desired selective tender method on the
reasons, which the workers’ petition now
faults.
In a curious development, the petitioning
workers disclosed that the companies listed
for the selective tender were not the same
companies on site. A source in the union
told SaharaReporters that Ms. Oduah
substituted the companies she secured
selective approval for at the BPP with other
ones that eventually went on the site,
without going back to the BPP for fresh
approval of the companies that are
eventually carrying out the projects.
“It seems as if the initial companies did not
settle the minister to her satisfaction, hence
her decision to bring in other companies to
do the job,” the unionist told our
correspondent.
The workers also disclosed that the
contracts, which were most likely inflated
due to the undue advantage of selective
award to crony firms, were yet to be
completed when Ms. Oduah appeared
again at the tenders’ board, seeking
approval for the “second phase.”
The workers’ petition to Senate asserted
that “the contracts listed in the phase-two
are [a] repetition of the same contracts
described in phase-one earlier approved.”
They contended that the rates in Phase-
Two were even more inflated.
In the petition, which the Senate leadership
has failed to address since receiving it in
July, the workers stated, for example, that
“Zakhem Construction Nig. Ltd was awarded
the contract for upgrade of [Murtala
Muhammed International Airport] Lagos in
the 1st phase at the sum of
N920,191,147.58. Curiously, [the] same
company was awarded another contract in
the tune of N981,900,300.45 for ‘upgrade
and rehabilitation’ of MMIA Lagos, under a
spurious banner of Phase II.
"One of the documents obtained by
SaharaReporters shows that the ministry
quoted N270.261 million for direct
procurement of an “emergency relocation”
of Airside Power House/Associated
Equipment at E-Wing of the Murtala
Muhammed International Airport in Ikeja,
Lagos. The direct procurement was
prepared in favor of a certain Messrs. Gamji
Nigeria Ltd.
“Our minister has a tradition of starting
something with [a] minimum of N255
million, just as the sham consultancy jobs
for airport rehabilitation, and it is trite to
remind of the N255 million BMW cars,” an
air transport worker stated.
“All she seems to care about is amassing
wealth for herself and her cronies while
planes occasionally drop from Nigerian
skies,” an Abuja-based transparency
advocate said.
http://mobile.saharareporters.com/news-
page/stella-oduah%E2%80%99s-airport-
upgrade-and-rehabilitation-project-
elaborate-scam-air-transport-wor

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.10