The Ebonyi State government in Nigeria budgeted Twenty Million Naira each in 2018 for the building of teachers’ quarters in about 40 select schools across the state. Dataphyte went to six project locations using contract data published on Ebonyi State’s Bureau of Public Procurement open Contracting portal.
In an earlier publication, the Open Contracting Partnership listed abandonment, substandardness as parts of challenges facing Nigeria’s procurement system.
The Education Partnership Centre had listed Ebonyi as low on Literacy.
Commendable as the project is, corruption and lack of accountability shadow its execution in the 6 locations tracked since the release of the funds in 2020.
At Uwana Comprehensive Secondary School, the Teachers Quarters’ project appears clearly abandoned with the existing structure dilapidated.
Persons who spoke to Dataphyte including the principal of the school, Mr Orji Orji, who lamented the abandonment of the building noted that for many months, no one has come to the project and this is corroborated by the overgrown bushes that have taken over the abandoned building.
Most project sites have signage that announces to any visitor which contractor is implementing the project and what MDA is sponsoring the project. However, this signage is conspicuously missing from the Uwana quarters project. One year after full money for the project was released, it remains uncompleted.
At Amasiri where the project award is a little over twenty million naira (N20.11 million) as well as at Umunwagwu Comprehensive Junior Secondary School, the projects are non-existent.
Different staff members who sought anonymity out of fear of victimization told Dataphyte that they never knew of such a project nor were they aware that they were meant to benefit from a teachers’ quarters.
At Oromkomogo Comprehensive Secondary School, the Teachers’ quarter was built. However, the two flats with three rooms each do not appear to be worth the twenty million naira allocated to it. The situation is similar at Itim Edda Comprehensive Secondary School and Ameka Comprehensive Secondary school.
The immediately obvious questions are how many teachers are in these schools and how many of them can benefit from two apartments? This raises the question of needs assessment and how the Ebonyi State Ministry of Education arrived at the decision to build teachers’ quarters. This question is even more important when considering the state of classrooms in these locations where some students learn under the shades of trees.
With two non-existent projects, at least forty million Naira remains unaccounted for while the abandonment of Uwana means that another twenty million is not fully expended. There is also the challenge to the cost of the structures that do exist.
In one of its many publications highlighting the importance of education, UNICEF described the need for qualitative education, also placing premium importance on affordability and access. In the same vein, the Nigerian government had been urged severally to prioritize Teachers’ welfare especially given the importance of these to delivering qualitative teaching and education.
Qualitative education and prioritized Teachers’ welfare which aids in achieving qualitative output have been noted as key to achieving goals of education and its role in societal development.
Non-Existent, Inactive Companies Get Contracts In Teachers’ Quarters Project
The state of the projects may not be surprising, especially considering that Dataphyte’s investigation shows that against legal provisions, inactive companies and companies not listed on the Corporate Affairs Commission were awarded contracts to build the Teachers’ Quarters.
It only makes sense that inactive companies execute non-existent projects.
An inactive company is one that has failed to file financial returns for at least two years and so no company listed as inactive by the Corporate Affairs Commission should have gotten a contract worth N20.108 million awarded in 2018 and released in 2020.
Also, organizations not listed on the Corporate Affairs Commission portal are not eligible for contracts from the government raising questions on how they were found eligible for the Teachers’ Quarters project without being legal entities.
The Public Procurement Act 2007 states that “a bidder may have its bid or tender excluded if the bidder is in arrears regarding payment of due taxes, charges, pensions or social insurance contributions unless such bidders have obtained a lawful permit in respect to allowance, the deference of such outstanding payments or payment thereof in instalments”
By this provision and the definition of an inactive company, most of the contract beneficiaries that appear on the Ebonyi State Bureau of Public Procurement Open Contracting Portal should have had their bids thrown out and not emerge as contract award recipients.
For instance, Godlinks Nigeria Limited that was listed as the contractor in charge of the abandoned Uwana Comprehensive Secondary school Teachers’ quarter is inactive on CAC.
Staff members at the school say they have never heard the name of the contractor and as against the norm, nothing was put as an inscription at the site of the project, even if GodLinks truly was the handler, they are not qualified to handle a government contract by reason of their inactiveness.
Another company that got the contract for the Itim Edda School project in Afikpo North is Tunet Engineering Nigeria limited but checks on the CAC portal reveal that the organization is also listed as inactive. Yet they are part of a project whose money was released in 2020. To have been listed as inactive by CAC they must have been in default for at least 2 years, which means back in 2018 when the contracts were awarded they likely did not have the required documentation to bid.
A company listed inactive must have defaulted in filing its financial returns(Tax) for at least two years. The CAMA 2020 found many companies as defaulting in filing their returns and thus were declared inactive by the Corporate Affairs Commission.
The organization listed as the one handling the non-existent Umunwagwu School project, Eunipetrose Multipurpose Nigeria Limited, could not be found on the Corporate Affairs Commission Portal, raising questions about how they were listed for a contract. If the company is non-existent, the project is not likely to be executed.
Another organization listed is Stelys Global Services limited, the organization was listed as one handling Ameka Comprehensive Teachers’ Quarters project but could not be found on the Corporate Affairs Commission portal. The nearest name found was Stely
Rose and Sons Global Services which was incorporated on September 30, 2020, makes it impossible for them to have been awarded a contract that has been awarded since 2018 and money was released for in 2020.
Awarding Contracts to Inactive Companies Illegal- Legal Expert
A legal expert, Barrister Awosusi Kehinde (Esq), while speaking with Dataphyte noted that the normal process of winning contracts involves preparing tax clearance.
“You cannot take contracts from the government because after filing your annual returns, you are expected to get a tax clearance certificate from the Federal Inland Revenue Service and you get a certificate of your annual return from the corporate affairs commission. That is when you are eligible to be awarded any contract. The annual return is duly signed by an accountant, a practising accountant preferred to be a chartered accountant”, Awosusi noted.
Ebonyi Bureau of Public Procurement Reacts
The Executive Secretary Bureau of Public Procurement in Ebonyi state, Uzoma Betty, denied the possibility of such abandonment as well as the awarding of contracts to unqualified or non-existent companies for the Teachers’ Quarters project.
This may be an odd admission as all the data used for the investigation came from the state’s open contracting portal.
She reiterated the state government’s commitment to ensuring every money budgeted to projects are spent and noted that her team will investigate such abandonment, denying being aware that contracts are abandoned or unqualified organizations got contracts.
“The Ebonyi state government is committed to ensuring that every single penny budgeted for projects is spent, it is impossible for there to be any abandonment, at best I am not aware of such development” she noted.
Corruption, Disruption of Public Procurement Transparency Dangerous for Country’s Development, Security- Expert
The Chief Executive Officer of the Public and Private Development Centre, Nkem Ilo, warned that disruption of public procurement transparency can lead to a breakdown of infrastructure in the country.
“Public procurement is the largest vehicle through which the government, state and federal, meets their constitutional responsibility of providing for the security and welfare of the Nigerian populace. A disruption of that vehicle through corrupt practices often leads to the creation of broken-down infrastructure across the different sectors, especially in the health, education, road and social welfare of the people.”
She further noted that the breakdown of infrastructure can lead to breeding grounds for insecurity, distrust in government and governance and various clashes that we see happening in the Nigerian state.
She said further that the root cause of challenges in Nigeria can be traced to the absence of basic amenities and standard of living than the average Nigerian deserves, she noted that a government that is serious about getting Nigeria on track would focus on plugging the leakages and ensuring that state funds are used for the purposes that they have been designated for, in a manner that is effective and efficient as provided by the various procurement laws/act.
On ways forward, she opined that more needs to be done in making transparency and accountability take centre stage in contracting.
“With ongoing reforms in contract disclosure through open contracting, a complementary step should follow in actively promoting accountability by leveraging on the role of investigative agencies such as the EFCC and ICPC in prosecuting breaches in the procurement law. Such accountability would go a long way in building public trust in government as well as serve as deterrents” the Procurement and Public Policy expert noted.