Scent Of Scandals

Strident as the accusation and counter-accusations were, they were small beer compared to what had come before. Earlier in the year, the House Committe on Power decided that a probe of the nation’s problematic power situation was due. Given loud, deafening public criticisms of the power sector that had gulped enormous sums under the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, they moved to probe the expenditure.

The move drew generous applause from suffering Nigerians. They salivated; their appetite whetted by President Umar Yar’Adua’s disclosure that over $10billion was invested in the sector by his predecessor without any noticeable improvement. Public excitement quotient would again rise when Dimeji Bankole, House Speaker, diclosed that the amount spent on the sector by the past administration was actually at $16billion. Thus, last May, the House saddled its committee on Steel and Power, headed by Ndudi Elumelu, with the task of unravelling why the power sector remained infirm despite huge doses of cash injection. To accomplish the task, the Committee held public hearings in Abuja and toured the nation’s six geo-political zones to assess the power projects that contractors claimed they had executed under the National Integrated Power Projects, NIPP. The NIPP projects were a set of power distribution and generation projects mostly located in the Niger Delta area designed to boost electricity supply by increasing generation and transmission capacities.

Though the Committee completed its assignment about four months ago, it has not been able to present its report to the House because it is already embroiled in bribery scandal. Specifically, contractors accused members of the committee of demanding and receiving monetary inducements during their public sittings and while touring project sites. There was an allegation that some members of the committee took N100million bribe from some of the contractors so as not to indict them in the report. The money, according to a national newsmagazine, was split among members at the Nigerian Air Force Base in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

On account of the allegations, the public approval rating of the House started dipping. Bankole was compelled to mandate the House Ethics and Privileges Committee, headed by Mrs. Florence Akinwale, to probe the allegations. But the Committee made no headway, blaming lack of petitions or evidence to support the allegations. The Committee was dissolved along with others at the end of July.

Even as the House resumed from its six-week vacation last Tuesday, there is no contesting the fact that the contentious report of the Ndudi Elumelu-led Committee remained on top of its agenda. Hence, the first committee whose membership was announced was that of Ethics and Privileges. The first assignemnt of the Committee, which now has Alhaji Sani Saleh-Minjibir as chairman, according to Bankole, will be to investigate the various “controversies” that had trailed the power probe report to help the House redeem its image. According to the Speaker, it was necessary to investigate the bribery allegations against the committee, as Nigerians had reason to be anxious about the investigative hearings conducted by the House and those that are ongoing.

A few days before the House resumed though, Elumelu attempted a defence of his committee in Akwuwu-Igbo, Oshimili North Local Government Area of Delta State. “During that process, my committee was saddled with the responsibility of investigating the most publicised probe in the power sector from 1999 to 2007, and that duty was duly carried out. We have since completed our assignment and we are only waiting for the House to slot in the submissions for the laying of that report on the table, through the rules. I want to assure Nigerians that as soon as we resume, I am very hopeful that in the rules and business, we will enlist it in the order of the day to enable us to finish our assignment,” he said.

Indeed, Elumelu has been on the defensive, striving to mend the reputation of members of the committee and even dared the House to present the report to the public in a forum about two months ago: “Why are they afraid, why? What are they afraid of? They should allow Nigerians to know what we have done. They should allow Nigerians to know what has gone wrong. We have been deceiving ourselves on the power sector. This issue of talking about one year, three-year targets, etc is deceitful. Tell Nigerians the true situation of things. We are generating below 1000MW currently. Don’t mind what they are telling you,” he said angrily.

But the problem with the report of the Power Committee is not just on the bribery allegation. Though it is yet to be officially published, a substantial portion of the report is already in the public domain. As reported by the media, the panel accused the Obasanjo administration of frittering about $13billion on the sector in eight years. This is in addition to other commitments in the region of $12billion, which were not funded.

“In a large number of instances, legal processes in the appropriation and release of funds for the power projects were circumvented. Projects costs were routinely and massively inflated, in a number of cases up to 1000 per cent. In about 50 per cent of the projects visited, contractors collected billions of naira and disappeared from project sites, while most project consultants maintained a conspiratorial silence,” the Committee said in the Executive summary of its report.

It also indicted former President Obasanjo, Governors Olusegun Agagu, Liyel Imoke of Ondo and Cross River states respectively, who were Ministers of Power at different times, and 14 other persons for mismanagement. The committee said the former president and other persons found culpable in the investigation should be called to “account for the recklessness in the power sector” and should also be investigated further by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC.

Also indicted were the companies handling the projects. These include Charnel Engineering; Renacs Engineering; News Engineering; Marubeni (WA) and Marubeni International; Rockson Engineering/Rockson International; Catlark International; Chrome Consortium Energy; Hoquado Nigeria Limited; Pivot Engineering; Lahmeyer International; Ellens Konsult; SEPCO, and CMEC Company. They were accused of sabotage and nons-performance. In fact, the panel recommended that NIPP contracts in Owerri, Yenagoa, Calabar, Maiduguri, Umuahia, Damaturu, Arochukwu and Ado Ekiti be cancelled. The panel hinged its decision on alleged incompetence of the contractors. It also recommended that Chrome Consortium; ABB Powerlines; Santon Energy; Atlantic Engineering; Siemens; Harlesden Engineering; Mogabs Limited, and Union Allied Engineering be made to refund funds they have received so far.

Another prescription of the Committee is that indicted persons should further be probed by the appropriate agencies. “The barefaced looting of the national treasury through the NIPP and PHCN and other projects greatly diminished national capacity to provide electric power, leading to wholesale decline in productive business activities and erosion of competitiveness of Nigerian products in the world market,” the report read.

On Alhaji Ahmed Abdulhamid, the committee said the former Minister of State for Energy was liable for “his patently and wilful manipulation of due process, flagrant abuse of due process, gross abuse of financial procedures in the award of contracts and payments, especially during the last weeks of the Obasanjo administration, exemplified by initiation of requests to the president and procurement of presidential approvals for huge and questionable payments in respect of Papalanto Phase II, Omotosho Phase II, Geregu Phase II, Alaoji Phase II, Mambilla Packages 1, Zungeru Hydro, Omoku Expansion, Gbarain-Ubie Expansion and Egbema Expansion–nine additional GE Frame 9 turbines to Rockson International–without due process compliance for contract award and certification for payment.” The committee said that Ahmed should be investigated by EFCC and ICPC and if found culpable, banned from holding public office for 10 years and if he is already holding any, he should be recalled and the appointment cancelled.

On Agagu’s tenure, the panel said it discovered that numerous contracts were awarded, including huge contracts to some unregistered companies, which were also recommended for further investigations. Nearly all the persons and contractors indicted have described the report as devoid of fidelity. For one, the contractors argued that members of the Committee are not very conversant with technical and engineering details in designing and constructing power plants. They have argued that it may take years before the completion of a power plant is achieved, as they are not fast moving consumer goods that are bought off the shelf.

An example given is the Nigerian Agip Oil Company power plant at Okpai, which took four years to build. The contractors also pointed to the Egbin Thermal Power Plant, for which an agreement was signed in 1981. The plant did not become operational six years after. And unlike the ongoing NIPPs, the above mentioned plants were not beset by problems of funding At inception last year, the Yar’Adua administration resolved to stop funding the NIPPs, some of which were nearing completion. This, said the contractors, was an incubus. “President Yar’Adua came in on 29, May 2007. By the first week of June, Mahmud Tukur, Chairman, Revenue Mobilisation and Allocation Commission, RMAFC, who was appointed by Obasanjo, went to court and got an injunction against government’s use of money from the excess crude account to fund projects. Forget about whether it was power, there are other projects. And the new government said it was a government of the rule of law, so it complied with the court injunction. So, the funding of the project stopped. People were just using whatever they have to do whatever they can do. Now, in March, you start a probe. Didn’t they think they needed to find out why everything stopped? Nobody has blamed Tukur for stopping the contracts from going on,” Wole Sowole of Chemo Technics told this magazine last week.

Some other contractors also accused the House Committee of not considering other issues that have stalled the completion of the projects before arriving at its recommendations. These, disclosed the contractors, were adequately explained during the public hearings and visit to project sites. Again, some contractors have not been able to mobilise to site because of hostility from the communities where the plants are located. This is as a result of non-payment of compensation for land appropriated for the projects. One of such is Hoquado Engineering, which cannot work on its site in Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom State, because the host community is insisting on compensation for the land on which the project will be located.

Energo Nigeria Limited is also suffering the same fate. Rockson Engineering, which is handling the construction of Omoku Thermal Power Station in Rivers State, Egbema Thermal Power Station in Imo State, and the PHCN Power Project in Alaoji, Abia State, is also complaining about allegations of violations of due process in securing the contracts and conclusions reached by the Elemelu panel on the work it is doing on the sites. An official of the company said rather than incompetence, stoppage of funding for the project has been responsible for slow pace of work. He said contrary to the panel’s claims, work has progressed to between 45 and 60 per cent in the power plants being built by the company. A PHCN consultant also noted that the four turbines procured for the Alaoji Phase One Project could not be moved to site because the bridge over Imo River cannot bear their weight. The machines weigh about 200 tonnes each. This was corroborated by Hajia Fatima Ibrahim, Minister of State for Power, earlier this year. On the issue of amounts received and the extent of work done, the contractors noted that they have not received above 25 per cent advance payment to cover the onshore and offshore components of the funding. The balance of 75 per cent is in form of Letters of Credit in favour of manufacturers of the equipment to be used for construction. Each payment is also backed by bank guarantees, thus if any contractor did not deliver, the bank could always be called upon to pay. Some of the contractors have since come up to specifically state how much they have received so far. The contractors accused the committee of bad faith in the process of inspection of the sites. “It is like they were working to a specific answer they have had in mind. They spent less that five minutes to visit the sites and they would not even listen to us when we tried to explain the technical side of the activity to them. The whole thing, to me, was a big show with the aim of feeding the emotions of Nigerians,” said a contractor. Even the Committee’s claim that over $13billion was spent between 1999 and 2007 appears garnished. Figures given by officials of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Auditor-General of the Federation and the Central Bank of Nigeria range between $6 and $7billion, while funds utilised and unutilised funds stand at $3.2billion. “Why was the committee desperate to put $13billion?” asked a contractor.

A particularly thorny issue is the funding of the committee. Most of the members claimed to have been ignorant about how Elumelu sourced funds for the activities of the committee. “Let me be frank with you, although I am a member of the committee, I was not expected to know everything that went on in terms of administration and finance. If I asked questions, I might be accused of confronting the leadership. So, I really don’t know much about the finances of the Committee,” said Muraina Ajibola, a member of the committee, in an interview. Elumelu himself has not come up to clear the air on funding. Did the committe receive external funding? That remains unclear. And if it did, was the funder an interested party?

This, however, is not the only sign of opaqueness in the Committee’s operations. Members have also accused Elumelu of shutting them out in the writing of the report. Donald Egberibin, Muraina Ajibola, Chinyere Igwe and Ahmed Malik, all members of the committee, said they were not privy to the writing of the report. “We toured the sites together and conducted the public hearings together and should have made input into the report,” said Igwe. Contractors said Elumelu ran a virtual one-man show while the panel toured project sites. “The credibility of the report of the committee is very much in doubt. There are fundamental issues that have been raised on it and hopes that the Elumelu panel can help Nigeria solve its power problem may have been dashed,” said Adebayo Olukojo, an Abuja-based lawyer. With doubts wafting over the report, the House will endure a wall-to-wall media coverage and public attention when the Ethics and Privileges Committee releases its report on the bribery allegations.

Outside of the power probe, through which the House lost a large slice of its box-office appeal, there have been other matters capable of further diminishing the House. The near-religious commitment to setting up probe panels is already being viewed by the public as a scheme by members to enrich themselves. This has also been linked to the agitations for membership of presumably meatier committees by some lawmakers. Recently, the House Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation, headed by Njidda Ahmed Gella, accused the management of NigerDock of gun running. “The activities of NigerDock plc and Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, on Tuesday 29th of July, 2008, presupposes that the allegations of illegal activities against them, including the use of the private jetty to import arms and ammunition for the militants in the Niger Delta among others, is in violation of the presidential order/directives prohibiting use and operation of private jetties for port operations other than that which the jetty is licensed for,” Gella said. However, he provided no shred of evidence to substantiate the allegation. Even the militants he accused NigerDock of funding issued a statement, alleging that Gella’s committee bribed them with $50,000 to implicate NigerDock. For now, the House is hardly smelling like roses, as it is being machine-gunned with allegations of greed, bribery and blackmail. Already, according to national newsmagazine, the bribery allegations have attracted the attention of the EFCC, a development sources said has rattled members.