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The House of
Representatives Committee on Public Procurement, on Wednesday,
disclosed that it has commenced “thorough monitoring” of how funds
assigned to various aviation agencies are being spent.

This is coming
after last week’s directive by the committee to the Nigerian Airspace
Management Agency (NAMA), mandating the agency to halt further action
on its 17 million Euro contract for the installation of 27 units of
Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) in all airports across the
country following alleged poor handling of the deal by the Ministry of
Aviation and the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP). “We are here to
oversight departments and agencies under the aviation sector in
continuance of the oversight function we embarked on two weeks ago; and
the whole idea is to track how public funds are used vis-à-vis
procurement from the bidding,” said Yusuf Tuggar, chairman and leader
of the committee while speaking to aviation correspondents at the
presidential wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA), Lagos.

Observing from afar

According to Mr.
Tuggar, the committee have been observing and monitoring the agencies
from a distance, adding that the 22 members of the House will commence
their scrutiny with the airspace agency before visiting other
authorities in the industry. “We are going to start with NAMA; we are
going to visit FAAN also, and all the other parastatals under the
aviation sector,” he said. “We will have our information, for we want
to know what they have been doing from the advertising stage to award
and implementation, which we hope to see also for ourselves. So it is
an ongoing thing.”

Explaining why the
committee terminated the contract by NAMA, Mr. Tuggar said that the
House received a petition against the agency, stressing that the
airspace management failed to honour the invitation sent them by the
House of Representatives. “We did receive a petition and we had a
public hearing on Monday, NAMA failed to show up, the ministry failed
to show up, but BPP showed up with a particular contract about
Aeronautical Information System,” he said. “We wrote them insisting
they suspend all further action on that particular contract, which is
the AIS. Because there was a lower bidder, yet the contract was awarded
to someone who bided higher. And then there seems to have been a
unilateral negotiation. But know that the Act does not say that you
pick one contractor and you go and negotiate with them. It has to be
open, it has to be competitive, and it has to be transparent.”

Penalising defaulters

The committee
chairman, however, disclosed that the House does not have the right to
penalise agencies found of contravening the act, rather defaulters will
channelled to the appropriate disciplinary arms of government. “We are
not a law enforcement body, so if we find them culpable, if we deem it
fit, we can send on the information to law enforcement body such as
EFCC or the police or any other one,” he said. “That’s if there is a
clear violation of the Public Procurement Act, a grave one that we feel
requires that.”