allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Transport Sector Probe - Can Senate Crack This? (Page 1 of 2)

From the onset, the Senate ad-hoc Committee charged with the responsibility of unearthing monumental waste of public funds in the transport sector since 1999 had thought it could treat the matter with kid gloves. But shortly after the 12-man panel led by the heavily built Senator Heineken Lokpobiri (PDP, Bayelsa), it became obvious that what lies beneath the sector is far more massive in terms of intrigues, frauds and discrepancies than the Senate envisaged. The panel was given the daunting task of discovering the whereabouts of trillions of naira sunk into the construction and maintenance of Nigerian roads, railway rehabilitation, inland marine transport and the aviation sector. None of this sub-sectors.

Shortly after discovering the weight of the task before them, the Senate ad-hoc committee resolved to split its assignment into three categories. First, the probe will begin with the seeking of explanations on how the huge investment made to improve the land transportation sub-sector was unable to make the desired impact. To help answer these important question, the committee singled out certain government officials, present and past, to shed light on why the sector continues to languish in decay. Among such officials are the ministers of transportation and finance as well as the Accountant General and Auditor General of the Federation. All former ministers of works, transportation and aviation during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo were also invited.

After the initial hide and seek, then enter the period of discrepancies in presentations. First to mount the witness seat was Alhaji Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo, Accountant General of the Federation. The AG said his office had released a total of N967 billion to successive ministers in charge of transportation since 1999. Dankwambo cleverly exonerated his office of whether or not the country got value for money on the expenditure, saying, "Ours is only to approve the release of the money from the Central Capital Account. We are professional accountants not engineers.

At some point during the AG's presentation, the question of N4.7 billion received as revenue from the nation's toll gates shortly before former President Obasanjo ordered bulldozers to destroy them cropped up. "We are aware that before the toll gates were demolished by Obasanjo, the revenue generated was N4.7 billion out of which N1.9 billion has been paid into the treasury. Where is the outstanding N2.8 billion? It is recorded to have been paid but the money is not in the treasury," members of the Senate panel asked.

Soon after Dankwambo left the witness seat, he was replaced by another professional accountant who prepares the nation's budget. Mr. Bright Okonkwo, the Director General of the Federal Budget Office, told the panel that the AG was wrong on the total capital expenditure in the transport sector. His own figure was N688.9 billion which is about N300 billion short of that of the AG. This submission drew surprise from Senators who felt something was definitely wrong. It is either the AG is wrong or the DG Budget is, they said. "Your figure is at variance with what the Accountant General, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has presented," Senator Lokpobiri pointed out.

When Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, the Minister of Finance, appeared, he told the panel that he had wanted the two different versions of the official records of expenditure in the transport sector to be harmonised before being presented before the investigative panel. "I had wanted the two of them to harmonise their records before making the presentation but it is unfortunate that that did not happen," he said.

The office of the Auditor-General of the Federation is not one that is very popular because of its role of prying into the accounts of government agencies. Mr. Robert Ejenavi occupies that office at present and when he appeared before the Senate he left no one in doubt of his capacity to open a can of worms on the monumental frauds going on in the transport sector.

Mr. Ejenavi told the panel that most of the road contracts awarded during the administration of Obasanjo failed because the contracts were awarded without regard to due process. Mr. Ejenavi gave example of a contractor who after collecting 50 per cent mobilization fee for a 30 kilometre road, did surface dressing for 100 meters and disappeared with public money.

The Auditor-General also indicted Obasanjo whom he said gave anticipatory approval for the withdrawal of N35 billion from the three per cent Natural Resources Development Fund to be used in the construction of Lokoja-Abuja road, Kano-Maiduguri-road and the East-West road. Mr. Ejenavi said up to the point of his appearing before the committee, the money is yet to be returned to the fund from where it was taken.

But our roads would have been safer with an alternative transport system which is lacking at the present. The Auditor-General revealed that the railway sub-sector received N124 billion within 1999 and 2007.

The Auditor-General then moved to FERMA which is perceived to have the worse scenario of clear cases of fraud and corruption in its disbursement of public funds.For example, Mr. Ejenavi said FERMA shared N251 million as cash advance without terms of payment to its staff within one year. The agency also allowed one Mr. Mamman to withdraw N67 million from its Zenith bank account on December 16 and 19, 2007 for his personal use. That was not all; FERMA was also generous to one of its staff, Mr. Lawrence Ojabo, by giving him N9 million for publishing a book titled Road to Glory that has nothing to do with improving Nigerian roads.

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