Daily Independent (Lagos)
Festus Owete
1 December 2008
Lawmakers plan a probe of contracts worth N100 billion awarded in the past one year by the Ministry of Defence in connection with United Nations peace-keeping operations.
They include the purchase of 154 units of Cobra Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs), assault boats, and other ammunition.
The House of Representatives Defence Committee conducting the investigation will also examine the purchase of eight units of mobile workshops, one unit of field hospital, and the hijacking of the execution of capital projects by the ministry.
How the N3.8 billion received from the Petroleum Technology Development Authority (PTDF) was used would also be probed.
A source on the Committee, led by Oluwole Oke (PDP, Osun), said it has concluded plans to summon the ministry's Permanent Secretary, Haruna Sanusi, this week to answer questions raised in the petitions.
The complaints of the petitioners, some of whom are workers in the ministry, "range from alleged inflation of contract sums and non-compliance with due process, which led the ministry to overshoot its budget by N37 billion," the source said.
One petitioner claimed that Otokar of Turkey is the exclusive designer and manufacturer of the Cobra APCs, each valued at $273,575.
But, he alleged, the ministry paid $1,034,587 for each, which made Nigeria lose $117 million to Singapore Technologies, the middleman for the APCs.
National Defence College Commandant, Rear Admiral John Jonah, told the Committee last week that some of the school's capital projects are being executed by the ministry.
The projects include the building of the permanent site, whose unused N1 billion vote in the 2008 budget the Committee queried.
A member of the Defence Committee, Bassey Out, said on Sunday that the probe could begin this week.
The Committee has some details on the APCs but "we will have to go to Singapore Technologies to confirm as well as compare the price of same item from other suppliers," he added.
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