Nigeria’s House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has ordered the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) to provide the details of the companies involved in the N18 billion bush-clearing contracts of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD).
The committee’s chairman, Hon. Oluwole Oke, gave the directive at an investigative hearing at the Green Chamber on Wednesday.
A day earlier, the committee had noted that the contracts were awarded to the companies for bush clearing, land preparation and rehabilitation of soil and plant laboratories.
The chairman clarified: “During the lockdown of the country as a result of COVID-19, some companies took contracts worth about N18 billion for bush clearing from the federal ministry of agriculture for land preparation, rehabilitation of soil plant lab and others. We cannot shave their head in their absence.
“We have invited the ministry of agriculture and they have made a submission. But some of our members whose constituencies these projects were supposed to be domiciled doubted the existence of these projects and for fair hearing, we have invited the companies that got the contract for them to come and tell this committee where and when the jobs were executed”, the lawmaker added.
During the committee’s sitting on Wednesday, Oke asked the clerk of the committee to write the Registrar of CAC and the Executive Chairman of FIRS to supply the lawmakers with information and documents about the firms involved in the contracts.
According to him, the committee is not concerned about who won the contracts but determining the value for money paid out and the sites of the projects.
The lawmaker maintained that the committee will carry this mission to the letter, adding that the “the clerk should also write the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) to furnish the committee with the financial status of the companies.”
The committee is probing queries raised by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation in the 2019 report on Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
Meanwhile, the FMARD has denied awarding the contracts at the sum of N18 billion.
The Director of Information in the ministry, Mr. Joel Oruche, in a statement on Wednesday, clarified that the ministry only carried out bush clearing and land preparation of 3,200 hectares in eight states, namely Osun, Ekiti, Edo, Cross River, Kaduna, Kwara, Plateau and Ogun.
Oruche stated that the bush clearing contract was awarded by the respective state governments at a total cost of N2.5 billion.
He listed other projects executed by the ministry during the COVID–19 period that totalled the sum of N18 billion as including the construction of rural roads in the six geo-political zones, soil sampling and mapping, farmers registration, rehabilitation and equipping of four national soil laboratories in Umudike, Ibadan, Kaduna and Abuja.
