Leadership (Abuja)
Philip Nyam
28 March 2008
Former minister of finance, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, yesterday disclosed that there was no due process for the $857 million paid to contractors by the Ministry of Finance under the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) as former President Olusegun Obasanjo approved the waivers following a request from the then minister of power and steel, Senator Liyel Imoke.
This is just as the former minister of education and later solid minerals, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, said she never supported due process waiver for any government contract even as she declared that the new legislation on public procurement is deficient to properly address the problem of corruption in the system.
Okonjo-Iweala, who is now the managing director of the World Bank, also urged the House Committee on Power and Steel probing the $16 billion allegedly spent on the power sector in the eight years of the Obasanjo Administration to hold those who were in charge in the Ministry of Power and Steel responsible for the decay in the energy sector.
Testifying yesterday at the resumed hearing of the investigative panel, Okonjo-Iweala, who was minister of finance between July 2003 and June 2006, said $3 billion was appropriated for the sector but only $857 million was disbursed during her days in the ministry for the NIPP contracts without recourse to due process because Obasanjo authorised it.
She said most of these things took place between 2005 and 2006 while she was going round the world trying to negotiate the country's debt relief.
"During 2005 and 2006 was also the time I was working on negotiating the debt problem. The Ministry of Power and Steel wrote to the president requesting for waiver of the due process and again we got a letter directing us to pay without recourse to due process on that particular item."
When asked by the committee chairman, Hon, Ndudi Godwin Elumelu, to be specific on who gave the directive, she replied: "Everybody knows that the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria at that time was President Olusegun Obasanjo and the minister of power and steel was Senator Liyel Imoke, who is now the governor of Cross River State."
Giving a breakdown of what was budgeted and released between 2003 and 2006 when she held forte as finance minister, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala said N54.6 billion was budgeted in 2004, N54.4 billion was released while out of the N4.3 billion recurrent only N4.1 billion was released.
In 2005, N91.1 billion was appropriated while N71.8 billion was released.
For 2006, N74.7 billion was budgeted and N74.6 billion released while only N3.1 billion of the N3.38 billion recurrent was released.
She explained that a loan of $2.5 billion was taken from the excess crude account by the government on the orders of the three tiers of government to finance the NIPP scheme, which she described as a laudable project but wondered what has become of the money.
She said, "I am also wondering what has happened to the mega- watts.
"An amount of $2.2 billion was to be set aside to finance the NIPP at inception to jerk up the power situation to 10,000 mega watts. The idea was to use the gas that was being flared in the country to generate power."
The former minister said she was pained that the power problem in the country has deteriorated to an abysmal level, adding, "Since I arrived the country this morning, I had to recourse to the use of generator because there is no electricity and I think this committee should get to the root of this problem and hold those responsible accountable."
Okonjo-Iweala denied that as minister she ever participated in the tender process or awarded any power contract, explaining that her brief was to disburse funds on the production of a due process certification of payment.
She, however, noted that the NIPP was a peculiar case, in which they were made to pay without due process payment certification.
"I want to state categorically and for the sake of clarity that as minister of finance, my role was that of disbursement of funds. I did not participate in the tendering or contracting process. So, I knew absolutely nothing about the contracting and tendering process of the NIPP. I was not in the mood of approving any contract and I was not the accounting officer of the ministry of power and steel."
While testifying before the committee yesterday, the World Bank vice president (Africa), Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, absolved herself of any complicity in the due process waiver granted on NIPP contracts by the former president, noting that she left the Bureau of Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit (BMPIU) before the NIPP came on stream.
She also clarified that she was never a member of the NIPP steering committee nor had anything to do with the project.
"The first thing to establish is that I was the director-general of BMPIU from 2002 to July 2005 when I was redeployed to the Ministry of Solid Minerals. I was not a member of NIPP and had no basis to be a member. I had absolutely no accountability in the NIPP."
She noted that as director-general of the Due Process Office, she was able to save about N137 billion on reduced contracts and her insistence to compliance with the due process standards earned her names from many Nigerians.
"That was one reason I was considered totally uncompromising, inflexible and given all kinds of names."
Asked to comment on the waiver granted by the former president, Ezekwesili noted that it was against the idea setting up the office.
"I did not ever consider that any project of government should enjoy waiver of due process."
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