After a contractor who was awarded renovation work at the Government Junior Secondary School in Kenyi, Kaduna State, Northwest Nigeria, stripped a block of classrooms naked − leaving no roof, windows and doors − he abandoned the project.
According to information available on the website of Kaduna State Public Procurement Agency (KADPPA), the renovation project was awarded in 2017 while the contractor reported at the project site on Feb. 10, 2018.
But with parents, teachers, and students expecting that the contractor was ready to work after stripping the structure bare, he left the site on March 9, 2018.
The neglect dashed the hopes of the students and their parents in this agrarian community in the state’s Kagarko Local Government Area, said Abdul Tasiu, a procurement monitor who recently visited the school.
Details about the project name, the contracted company and when it was supposed to complete the project were not supplied, Tasiu remarked.
Building citizens’ capacity in procurement monitoring
Prior to 2019, Tasiu was not involved in any project monitoring − indeed, he never had an idea of how to engage the government on awarded projects − but he was passionate about transparency and accountability in governance.
As a member of the Community Youth Volunteer Network Initiative, a civil society organisation (CSO), he was one of the over 70 representatives of CSOs trained by the Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) in July 2019 on open contracting and project monitoring in Kaduna State. The training, held with support from MacArthur Foundation, was part of deliberate efforts to involve citizens in governance through procurement monitoring.
Since the training, Tasiu has monitored six projects across six schools in the state including the Government Junior Secondary School in Kenyi.
“I’m always happy that I attended the training,” he said, adding, “I have monitored six projects in two local governments; Kagarko and Jabba.”
“I visited the sites twice to see the structures and the level of work done so far. Of all the projects visited, only two were in a bad shape; the Junior Secondary school in Kenyi Community which was abandoned by the contractor after he stripped the room and left and the one at UBE Sabam Daji.”
Kaduna State Government was reputed to have taken a lead in developing policies that promote fiscal transparency and accountability in its various governance processes, but there was the need to get citizens involved. The government had in place Kaduna Eyes and Ears and Community development charter that creates access to procurement information.
With the support from MacArthur Foundation, PPDC, a citizen sector organisation focusing on open contracting through procurement and contract monitoring activities in Nigeria, interfaced with Kaduna State Government and created its open contracting portal. This was in addition to building the capacity of government procurement officers, as well as training of the CSOs on procurement monitoring.
“The training was the needed impetus we needed at that time and couldn’t come at any better time,” said Tasiu.
He fears that the state of Government Junior Secondary School, Kenyi, may impact negatively on the enrollment drive of Nasir El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State.
In 2017, the governor announced that there was an increase in primary education enrollment in the state from one million in 2015 to 2.1 million. But the drive to get more school-aged children in school, especially those transiting to the secondary level, Tasiu says, may be in jeopardy with schools like JSS Kenyi.
But all hope is not lost as Tasiu revealed that a Freedom of Information (FOI) request sent to the state Ministry of Education on the procurement details of the contract has yielded a positive outcome.
Officials in the school say they don’t know the details of the project, because their correspondence has always been to the Zonal Director for Education overseeing the area, added Tasiu.
Both Kaduna State Universal Basic Education Board (KADSUBEB) and State Ministry of Education (SMoE) could not find the contract document.
Increasing citizen’s participation in governance
Kaduna State is one of the states that have subscribed to the global accountability platform called Open Government Partnership (OGP).
The OGP requires that the government is transparent and accountable to the citizens while utilising public funds, but procurement monitors lament that public information is still difficult to access in the state’s ministries, departments, and agencies like the case of the project at JSS Kenyi.
Saied Tafida, the team lead for the procurement monitors in Kaduna, says open contracting has fostered community stakeholders’ engagement with the government authorities in the awarding of contracts that meet the needs of the locals.
Tafida coordinates about 40 monitors and says his teams – about five of them – have gone around the state seeing projects including those in the education sector, judiciary, health, and works. They have also been engaging relevant government agencies on peculiar issues on those projects.
“Our teams have had to conduct a series of community engagements and town hall meetings, bringing all stakeholders together, majorly on abandoned projects,” he said, adding, “and this has yielded a lot of positive results.”
The government is expected to get value for the money spent on awarded projects, while citizens also must derive maximum benefits from these projects. The team lead says the involvement of professionals such as quantity surveyors in the monitoring of the projects added fervour to the exercise.
“Even where some projects were completed, the professionals were able to determine whether the work done meets up with a quality standard or not,” he said.
He says professionals have recommended an improved procurement process to weed out incompetent contractors.
“Certified professionals should be engaged early in the project life cycle, cost control should be properly enforced to avoid the poor quality of labour and materials while adequate project supervision is recommended to overcome time overrun,” he quoted professionals as recommended in one of their reports.
One of such completed but poorly done projects uncovered by the monitors is the building of a block of four classrooms at the Government Junior Secondary School (GJSS), Television, Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna.
Available information on the website of the Kaduna State Public Procurement Agency (KADPPA) detailed that the construction of a block of four classrooms at GJSS Television, Chikun (SUBEB 2017) was budgeted and contracted to M/S Salma Global Ventures for N11.724 million, says Sola Ojo, a journalist and procurement monitor.
There are arguments that the project was not the priority of the school as the teachers − 40 in number − and the 143 students needed more furniture. The quality of the work done was below the quality standard, Ojo reports, and the contract was awarded without prior needs assessment of the school.
“There was no time anyone came to the school on fact-finding or need assessment. They only came and told us they would be building a block of four classrooms. They did not give us any document nor did they erect any signpost at the project site for us to know what the project was all about,” an official of the school was quoted as saying.
“You can see the sagging roof due to inferior wood. The terrazzo was poorly finished, the doors are bad and there was generally poor supervision on the part of the implementing agency.”
According to the monitor, all the newly built four classrooms started leaking, while some windows and doors were off the frames shortly after the project was delivered and a certificate of completion was issued by the implementing ministry or agency.