CONTRACT AWARD TO 20 GHOST COMPANIES: Ask PINE, not me – SGF

Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, has said that the Presidential Initiative on the North East (PINE), should be answerable for all questions in respect to grass-cutting contract awards and not himself.

He said, “To the real and more important issue, the general public should not be made to believe that the SGF has the authority or power to award contracts. This, indeed, is not the case.

“As with all awards of contract in government, the PINE projects under investigation went through what is referred to as due process in public expenditure.”

Lawal stated this in a statement he released on Friday through Bolaji Adebiyi, director press, in the office of the SGF.

He was reacting to reports that the SGF awarded contracts to 20 “ghost companies” through PINE.

Senate ad-hoc committee chairman, Senator Shehu Sani, had on Thursday said that in the cause of the committee’s investigation of the humanitarian crisis in the Northeast, it discovered that several of the companies awarded the grass-cutting contract were ghost companies.

He said his committee, however, would keep searching for “these companies” which Lawal allegedly gave contracts to.

But in the statement on Friday, Adebiyi, said all contracts in the issue in question went through due process.

According to him, following Sani’s comments, “The implication is that PINE is really the body to answer all inquiries regarding the contract awards, not the SGF.

“The contracts were awarded only after the requisite clearances were obtained from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP). It is expected that these clearances are obtained only when all conditions precedent to the awards of contracts are met.

Read also: GRASS-CUTTING SCAM: No trace of 20 firms awarded contracts by SGF’s committee

“Apart from the BPP huddle, the tenders board of the procuring agencies, in this instance, the office of the secretary to the government of the federation, has to approve of the contracts before they are awarded. At no time were these processes compromised in the award of contracts by PINE.”

Adebiyi, further exonerating Lawal said, “It must be emphasised also, that the SGF is not even a member of the tenders board. The SGF despite his position in government cannot award contracts.

“He is not even a member of the tenders board. All contracts must, indeed, pass the acid test of obtaining clearance from the Bureau of Public Procurement and the scrutiny of the Tenders Board.

“​PINE contracts were awarded following strict compliance with public expenditure and procurement processes. It will interest everyone to know too, that all PINE projects were properly and satisfactorily executed.”

The statement, however, failed to address running rumours that suggest that Rhola vision, a company that allegedly won a N200m contract under the PINE project, belonged to Babachir.

 

 

 

 

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