Leon Usigbe
15 September 2007
Abuja — The Clerk of the National Assembly (CNA), Alhaji Nasir Arab, has admitted the process that led to the award of the of the N628 million for the renovation of official residence of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mrs. Patricia Etteh and that of her deputy, Hon. Babangida Nuguroje was faulty.
Giving evidence at the ongoing sitting of the nine-member committee investigating the circumstances surrounding the award of the contract on Friday, he remarked if the same situation arose in future, he would not repeat the mistakes that had been made.
This followed an observation by one of the members of the committee, Hon. Chinedu Eluemonu who pointed out that there were no demolition, architectural, mechanical and electrical drawings attached to the request for the contract before it was awarded and whether in the light of those circumstances he would repeat the process if given another opportunity.
He told the committee that the management of the National Assembly was under pressure from the Speaker to process the contract documents because of her desire to quickly move into her official residence, leading to the circumvention of procedures that would ordinarily have been followed on the case, saying, "The pressure we received from the Speaker made us to look inward."
The CNA who is the adminis-trative head of the National Assembly revealed that the quotations for the contract originated from the office of the Speaker with a directive for the CNA to process them for the consideration of the body of principal officers led by Mrs. Etteh.
He remarked that there was no memo sent to him requesting for the renovation of the buildings except three quotations from the contractors already acted upon by the Speaker who he said he could not flout her directives to process them since it was not the first time such a procedure had been adopted in the National Assembly.
According to him, "The contrac-tors addressed the quotations to the Speaker because she wanted the job to be done even though that does not necessarily mean the same contractor has to do it until it is determined by the professio-nals in my office.
"The Speaker is my superior. If she directs, I have to comply," he said, adding that he did not go through the entire contents of the file containing the request for the award to determine whether due process was followed except the areas specifically brought to his attention.
In response to another question about whether there was any security cover provided for the contract, he stated that the contractors gave bank guarantee, which led to the advance payment of N59 million for the job made to them.
He admitted that the contract may have failed to meet the standards recommended by aspects of the Federal Govern-ment financial regulations but that there were other portions in the provision, which they relied upon to process the contract award.
"There may have been some lapses but we have other portions of the financial regulations we relied upon. To the extent of the exigency of the time for this contract, we did our best to have a cover," he averred.
The CNA also stated he did not know any of the contractors as he has never had contact with them. "I don't know them. I don't know from where they came. I have never seen any of them in my life," he said.
When he was referred to the cost of renovating the Deputy Senate President's official residence that was implemented for N29 million as against the N90 million quoted for the deputy Speaker's residence, he revealed that the amount was different because the National Assembly's management did the costing of the Deputy Senate President's residence.
"We were fully involved in the preparation of the Deputy Senate President's house but we were not given the latitude to do the same in the case of the Deputy Speaker's residence," he revealed.
Testifying earlier, the Director of Legal Services of the National Assembly, Mr. Mohammed Sani Omolori revealed that some of the contractors that were given the job were not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) but the management could not verify their status because of the hurried nature of the contract.
But he said that there was substantial compliance to due process in the award of the contract.
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