ICPC probes constituency projects in Rivers, Ogun, Kaduna, 13 others

The Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), will today, launch an investigation into fraudulent procurement practices in the award of contracts for the constituency and executive projects across 16 states of the federation.

Its spokesperson, Rasheedat Okoduwa, who made the disclosure yesterday in Abuja, listed the affected states to include Rivers, Delta, Cross River, Taraba, Ekiti, Ogun, Gombe, Nasarawa, Kebbi, and Kwara.

The others are Jigawa, Abia, Ebonyi, Niger, Oyo, and Kaduna.

The exercise, she pointed out, would focus on projects relating to health, education, water resources, agriculture, and power.

Some of the objectives of the tracking, according to her, “are to investigate fraudulent procurement practices in the award of contracts for the constituency and executive projects, and make recoveries on projects or contracts confirmed to have been inflated, or in which contractors under-performed, or did not perform at all.”

Another is to track contracting companies for compliance.

Okoduwa said the anti-graft agency was undertaking the inquiry owing to the success story of the first phase that held in 12 states last year.

She noted: “The commission, in 2019, launched the pilot phase of the exercise in which it tracked projects’ performance from 2015 to 2019 in 12 states.

“Successes of the exercise included the recoveries of tractors, ambulances, dialysis machines and other hospital equipment from sponsors of the projects across the pilot states.

“The successes also included the recovery of huge sums of money, hundreds of tricycles, grinding machines and other empowerment items from the project sponsors.”

The spokesperson went on: “Furthermore, the exercise forced contractors, who hitherto had abandoned projects, to return to the site to complete them.

“ICPC is, again, set to take the exercise to states not covered in the pilot phase with the aim of ensuring that government gets value in the execution of public projects, and improved delivery of social welfare services to the citizens.

“Just as the first phase, the project tracking will be done in collaboration with the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS), civil society organisations (CSOs), the media, Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and other stakeholders.”