Last week judgement by a Federal High Court compelling the federal government to "publish the total amount of money paid to Chinese and local companies and contractors and specific details of the names of the companies and contractors and status of the implementation of the project" has once again brought to the fore issues surrounding the bungled $460m Abuja Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) project. We must commend the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) for its persistence.
The close-circuit cameras were part of the National Public Security Communications System (NPSCS) contract awarded in 2010 to a Chinese company, ZTE Corporation, at $470 million. The Chinese Exim Bank provided $399.5million loan while the federal government paid the balance of 15 per cent, amounting to $70.5 million in counterpart-funding. Some1000 units of the CCTV cameras were supposed to be installed in Lagos and Abuja. The purpose of the CCTV contract "was to facilitate real time online communication between security agencies to enhance their capacities in fighting crime." But it has become another monument to waste.
The project was to generate voice, video and data, using the code division multiple access (CDMA) technology to tackle terrorism, armed robbery, kidnapping and other violent crimes that increasingly undermine our security. But years later, the installed cameras have become mere objects of decoration. Out of the 1000 cameras in Abuja, only 40 are "online" while the rest 960, in the words of one of the police officers manning the centre, "are down" and others vandalised. An angry Tony Nwulu, a member of the House of Representatives committee which once probed the project said it was "planned to fail from the beginning because from all indications, all the components didn't do the right thing."
That the project designed to enhance national security was meant to fail is indeed worrying. The contract for the CCTV installation was awarded without due process and Mr. Emeka Eze, the former Director General of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) confirmed this much. The contract ought to have been accompanied by the certificate of no objection issued by the BPP, which it never did. But the Nigerian Communications Satellite, better known as NigComSat, which acted as consultant of the project, blamed its eventual abandonment on the government's inability to fund the project.
The former Director General of NigComSat, Mr Ahmed Rufai, who served as a member of the project management set up by the government blamed the failure to provide the required "operational funds" to run the system after it was completed in 2012 for the problem. The required monthly operational budget for the security project as of 2012 was about N11 billion. The figure was reviewed downwards to about N5 billion after Rufai had left but still, funding was not forth coming. "The situation with the project is like buying a new car and refusing to provide money to buy fuel", said Rufai, "how will the car function?" On his part, the Managing Director of ZTE, Mr Hao Fuqiang, said the project was shut down around 2013 due to "non-operational" fund. Yet the country was expected to start payig the principal sum in the CCTV failed contract as from 2018. Meanwhile, debt servicing alone is already more than $60 million.
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The CCTV scandal is yet another clear evidence of how corruption and mismanagement are standing on the way of Nigeria's efforts to upgrade its infrastructure and other vital services. This is even more painful because it is coming at a great cost to the nation. The pertinent question: Just how long shall we allow this country to bleed uncontrollably?
