Juliana Taiwo
2 July 2009
Abuja — The widely criticised decision of the Federal Government to suspend the award of fresh contracts may have been reversed.
Last week at the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, it had been controversially announced that based on President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's directives, further approvals of contracts by various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) had been stopped.
FEC said it had, instead, begun an assessment of the contracts already awarded.
But the House of Representatives had immediately taken exception to the decision, describing the move as a deliberate attempt to implement the budget selectively.
Speaking to State House correspondents yesterday, the Minister of Information and Communications, Prof. Dora Akunyili, said it was incorrect to believe that the Federal Government had halted the award of fresh contracts as the government was only trying to take stock of the contracts already awarded.
It also intends to, henceforth, devote the last meeting of every month to appraising the performances of contracts before awarding fresh ones, THISDAY learnt.
In what sources said was an attempt to avoid another face-off with the National Assembly, FEC yesterday approved the award of more contracts.
The Executive is already entangled in a dispute with the federal lawmakers over an alleged failure to implement the budget as passed into law by the National Assembly early this year.
Akunyili said yesterday: "Council continues to give contracts as you can see with today's approvals. Council approved the final payment of N6 billion in favour of Messrs RCC for the construction of the Federal Ministry of Finance Phase II Headquarters office complex in Abuja. The contract for the office complex was awarded in 2001 and presently at about 95 per cent completion. The Ministry of Finance has already taken effective occupation of the greater part of the building."
FEC also approved the receipt of an International Development Association (IDA) credit worth N14 billion ($95million) for the execution of secondary education projects in Lagos State as well as $225 million to mitigate the spread of HIV/AIDS.
It also disclosed that it had granted the requests by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for retirement age of its members to be moved to 70 from 65, university autonomy and increased funding, but was still negotiating on salary increase since there are no adequate funds to tackle that immediately.
Akunyili said the meeting, presided over by President Yar'Adua, agreed that the credit facility for Lagos State was in line with government's commitment to reforming the education sector in order to improve skills and the general standard of education in the country.
The loan is for the proposed Eko Secondary Education Project. The objectives of the proposed project are to improve the quality of education in public and senior secondary schools across the state.
She said: "The proposed credit would support the Lagos State government's plan of human development by directly supporting the junior and senior secondary schools through grants, performance-based incentives, teachers training and standardized testing of the students. This project will benefit over half million public schools pupils, build the capacity of over 7,000 teachers and school administrators and strengthen capacity of district institutions.
"The objective of the proposed second HIV/AIDS development projects is to reduce the risk of HIV infection by scaling up prevention, intervention and to increase access to and utilization of HIV counselling, testing care and support services. The project will be implemented in all the 36 states of the federation and the FCT," she said.
Akunyili while explaining government's decision on the approval, however, said that the memo was approved with a proviso that there should be re-negotiation of the loan terms so that more funds would be directed to screening and treatment.
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