Calabar Channel contract and budget padding

By Jerry Uwah

In 1978, the federal government dredged and reconstructed the Calabar Port. It was a major project in a city that the economy revolved around the civil service. Calabar, the capital of Cross River State, was largely a civil service town in the 1970s. Th e scene has not really changed since then. Th e dredging of the Calabar Port was so signifi cant that there was hardly a household that did not benefi t from the contract. It generated massive employment. Even fi shermen benefi tted from the dredging activity of the Dutch fi rm, Harbour Works which handled the contract.

Harbour Works laid pipelines that channeled sand from the dredging exercise into the creeks. Th ere were heaps of sand in the swampy mangrove forests across the channel. Fishermen captured hundreds of fi shes that were sucked into the pipelines and deposited in the swamps. Everyone felt the impact of the dredging. It was a diff erent ball game when in 2014, the federal government awarded contract for the dredging of the Calabar Access Channel to enable bigger ships access the Calabar Port.

  1. It should be regarded as 419 and treated as such.

Th e contract was awarded to Niger Global Engineering and Technical Company Limited, a fi rm which Hope Uzodinma, the chairman of the Senate Joint Committee on Customs, Excise, Tariff and Marine Transport has signifi cant interests. Th is time, inhabitants of the city knew next to nothing about the project. Th e contract itself did not follow the due process. More qualifi ed bidders protested as the contract was awarded a fi rm they considered incompetent. Niger Global allegedly dredged the Calabar Channels between November 2014 and January 2015. Th e contract cost was $26 million.

Th e Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) made the initial payment of $12.5 million to the contractor. Th e company now expects NPA to pay the balance of N25 billion. Th e balance of the contract sum is now a subject of simmering controversy between NPA and the Senate Standing Committee on Marine Transport. Th ere are claims that Uzodinma is lobbying the committee to pad NPA’s budget by N25 billion to enable the authority pay his fi rm the outstanding N25 billion for the purported dredging of Calabar Channel. NPA’s budget is consequently trapped in the senate as the managing director resists the padding.

Th e National Assembly has notoriety for budget padding. However, what Uzodinma is allegedly lobbying for makes the padding of the 2017 budget pale into insignifi cance. NPA claims that Niger Global has not done anything to justify even the $12.5 million it collected in 2015. Th e Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) investigated the project and expressed doubts about execution of the contract. EFCC ordered NPA to engage a reputable fi rm to carry out forensic bathymetric survey to authenticate Niger Global claims of having dredged the Calabar Channel.

NPA contracted Harbour Master and Port Hydrographer and a fruitless search for traces of dredging commenced. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Th e auditors said they doubted if anything was actually done.

Th ey wondered how Niger Global could have executed such a project without communicating with NPA which was a joint venture partner in the special purpose vehicle used for the project. Perhaps, the most disturbing aspect of the Calabar Channel dredging scandal is the recurring decimal of budget padding which has become the synonym of the National Assembly.

Th e contractors handling the reconstruction of LagosIbadan expressway have suspended work on the crucial project because the National Assembly hacked down the contract budget and used its proceeds to provide for irrelevant constituency projects. Now an individual senator wants to pad the budget of NPA and compel the authority to pay for unexecuted contract.

Th e allegation leveled against Uzodinma has taken budget padding to notoriously scandalous proportion. Th e strange development is worsened by the fact that Uzodinma leisurely worked his way into a crucial senate committee where he had vested interest. Was the senate president not aware of Uzodinma’s interest in a fi rm handling a juicy contract for NPA when he was appointed to head a committee that would make crucial decisions on the project? Th e federal government should not allow the simmering controversy over Niger Global and the Calabar Channel dredging contract to be swept under the carpet. EFCC and BPP cannot point fi ngers at the same contractor for nothing.

Th e allegation that someone wants to pad NPA’s budget to the tune of the outstanding scandalous contract sum should be thoroughly investigated. If it is discovered that Niger Global actually collected money and abandoned the project while a senator with primary interest in the fi rm is angling to collect more for doing nothing, the fi rm and its owners should be sanctioned appropriately. Th e Niger Global scandal has gone a long way to personalise the crime of budget padding. In this case, the federal government does not have to go to the Supreme Court to determine whether the law of the land was breached by planned budget padding that has trapped the budget of NPA in the senate. With the auditors’ report, what has happened borders on collecting money under false pretence. It is widely known in Nigeria as

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