Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, yesterday, in Benin heard that of the N875 million contract awarded by the state Urban Water Board for water supply in the state, a contractor, one Mr. Henry Ojiekhomon was paid the sum of N473 million for the seven water projects which he never executed.

In its report to the governor by the Assets and Verification Committee, set up to look into government books under Prof. Osunbor, the committee noted that Mr. Ojiekhomon whose contract worth was N693 million, purportedly executed three of the seven projects in one day and the rest at another date.

He noted that all the projects executed by the board through direct labour amounted to N1.2 billion and N875 million worth of contracts given out to contractors.

According to Mr. Oseni Elamah, "what is interesting is that we tried to find out who executed these projects. We have inspection reports for the project sites visited and of course the work they did by contract. We curiously observed one contractor alone handled seven of these jobs through various companies"

The committee observed that fund for the execution of water projects by the board was withdrawn cash from the banks by individual who claimed they handed over the money to the general manager of the board, Engr. Monday Umane.

"They said that each time the money is cashed from the various banks the General Manager tells them to come to GTBank, Sapele Road branch where he turns the place into a distribution centre and the manager of the bank is his cashier"

"There was a particular day that he took N197 million from First Inland and took it GT Bank, Sapele Road. We looked at the papers that were presented to us and we observed that within 12 days alone i.e., between 15 - 26 July 2008, they withdrew a total sum of N798 million.

"We also reviewed the various contracts involved. The general findings is that most of the jobs were either not executed and where they were pretending to execute them, they were just shoddy jobs. None of these contracts has a payment mobilization less that 83 percent

"They were giving cash. In most of the contracts given out to these contractors, there was no single signed agreement to back them up. They could not present any document to us.

The committee recommended that there should be a detailed investigation of the urban water board activities and its officials as they have recovered solid evidence of what transpired there with some of the funds which will be passed on to the investigating team, including the various bank accounts operated by the general manager and some of the transfers that he made.