A review of the Ekiti state open contracting portal has shown that the state awarded a contract of N90 million for transportation, relocation of furniture and equipment from the Ekiti house in Abuja to the state capital Ado-Ekiti.
Details on the state open contracting portal shows that the contract, awarded to Onward properties limited, a company the Corporate Affairs Commission listed as inactive, was awarded on September, 24, 2020.
The contract did not state the quantity of furniture and appliances that needed to be moved, however N90 million could transport 1,200 persons from Abuja to Akure at the current hiked airfare cost of 75,000 per passenger. If the journey was by road, the same amount will transport 6,766 persons from Abuja to Lagos, at the current road transportation price of N13,300 per person.
If the state had decided to rent a cargo plane to transport and relocate the furniture and appliances, one of the world’s most luxurious cargo plane operators rents out its Cargo plane of 7,600KG at 10,500 Euros per hour, at the current rate of N420 to one Euro, the government would have spent N4.4 million naira to transport the furniture, appliances from Abuja to Akure, a neighbouring state to Ekiti with an airport which has an estimated travel time of 50 minutes by air. Even if it took 2 hours, its still less than 10 million naira.
Even if the government decides that the furniture and appliances are large enough to require five cargo planes that have 7,600kg capacity each and still pay double the rate that is obtainable at one of the world’s luxurious charter, the state would have spent N44 million.
This would leave an extra balance of N46 million unspent.
If the state had decided to buy a new Trailer to transport the furniture and Appliances from the state house in Abuja to the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, from where it would connect the chartered cargo plane(s) (whether one or five chartered cargo planes), it would have spent between N15million-N25 million on Purchase of a brand new Trailer.
If the maximum amount of N25 Million was spent on Trailer, this would still leave N19 million unspent. Assuming the state decides to engage 50 persons who will lift the unknown quantity of ‘furniture and appliances’ from inside the Ekiti state house to the ‘Newly bought truck’ waiting just outside the building and decides to pay them N100,000 each for workmanship, the state would have spent N5 Million and still have N14 million unspent.
Dataphyte reached out to Onward Properties, the company that won the contract, asking for a quotation it would cost to convey furniture and appliances but the respondent at the end of the call stated that the organisation does not offer such service, thus, he would not know. When told that the firm offered a similar service to Ekiti state government, the respondent stated that “that was when my dad was alive” and dropped the call afterwards.
Efforts to reach out again proved abortive as calls to the number were dropped.
This amount awarded for transportation of furniture and appliances is more than the total amount earmarked in the state’s 2020 budget for the ‘Rehabilitation, Sustainability and Maintenance of Water Schemes’ which was put at N50 million.
The transportation and relocation expenditure is just N10 million below the N100 million earmarked for ‘Basic Health Care Provision Fund’ in the 2020 budget. The money is also 76% more than the N21.412 million total salary approved for the Primary Healthcare Development Agency of the state in 2020.
The amount spent on the transportation and relocation is 100% more than infrastructural development of government colleges in the same year which is not captured at all in the budget.
The 90 million earmarked for furniture is about 50% of the earmarked budget for schools’ renovation. The government approved the sum of N200 million for the renovation of all schools in the state in 2020. When the sum is compared to the budget performance of schools’ renovation in the previous year (2019), which stood at 0.4%, the government may have spent more on relocating furniture and appliances from Abuja to Ado-Ekiti than it spent on renovation of schools in the previous year.
The money spent on furniture and appliances relocation will be enough to construct a 4.5Km road in the state, based on the approved budget of N50 million for a similar road project within Ekiti state university in 2020.
The government approved the sum of N500 million for ‘Construction/Rehabilitation of Agbado, Ode and Omuo Roads’ and awarded an equivalent of 18% of the money for the road construction for transporting/relocating furniture, appliances from Abuja to Ado-Ekiti.
Dataphyte reached out to the official phone numbers provided on the Ekiti state Bureau of Public Procurement portal to seek comments but the two numbers failed to connect after several days of trial.