From Punchng

Published 3/28/2008 12:34:00 PM
Obasanjo breached due process – Okonjo-Iweala, Ezekwesili
John Ameh, Abuja
There were more shocking revelations on Thursday as a former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and her counterpart in charge of the Ministry of Education, Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili, testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Power and Steel in Abuja.
Okonjo-Iweala is currently a Managing Director of the World Bank, while Ezekwesili is the bank’s Vice-President (Africa).
The committee, headed by Mr. Ndudi Elumelu, is investigating how the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo spent about $16bn on the power sector between 1999 and 2007 without result.
The steering committee for the National Integrated Power Projects, headed by the Governor of Cross River State, Senator Liyel Imoke, paid $1.5bn on the NIPP in 2005 following presidential approval.
Imoke headed a presidential committee on power generation and was later made minister of power.
However, Okonjo-Iweala, who was the finance minister between July 2003 and June 2006 told the committee that as at the time she left the office, only $857m was disbursed to her knowledge.
The $857m paid left a balance of about $643m, which the former minister admitted, was disbursed after she left office.
She said, “Honourable chairman of the committee, let me not try to defend what I am not aware of.
“I didn’t know that a different thing was submitted to you,” she stated, when she was confronted with a memo duly authenticated by Imoke, then the Minister of Power and Steel.”
She told the committee that when a decision was taken to fund the NIPP from the Excess Crude Account, the three tiers of government agreed to set aside $2.5bn for the projects.
“However, from what I later read in the media, about $3bn or more was quoted as the amount spent.
“Well, I am not in a position to defend that because the bulk of the releases for the projects were done after I had left office,” she added.
According to her, the payment of the $857m was done without due process certification because Obasanjo “instructed” that the certification for the projects should be waived.
Explaining how the waiver was done, Okonjo-Iweala told the panel that Imoke raised a memo to Obasanjo requesting the waiver because of the urgency needed to execute the projects.
She said, “Thereafter, I acted on instructions from Mr. President (Obasanjo); the letter was passed to me conveying the decision to waive the certification, and the ministry acted.
“Questions that are beyond me will have to be asked elsewhere; because as a minister of finance, I was a member of the Federal Executive Council and a minister of the Federal Republic.
“I did not oversee any power projects; I absolutely know nothing about the contracts.
“The ministry of power and steel handled the contracts; so they are in the best position to explain.”
The former minister denied the claims made by Imoke that she was the accounting officer for the NIPP. Okonjo-Iweala said that the power and steel ministry, which initiated the projects, should be held accountable for their failure.
At his appearance last week, Imoke had claimed that Okonjo-Iweala was the accounting officer for the NIPP as the finance minister.
She said the finance ministry made funds available for projects based on the instructions and approvals before it, but could not answer questions for the inappropriate use of the money.
Asked about her feelings on the huge funds spent on power without commensurate results, she replied, “It’s a very big disadvantage to the country; I too will like to know what came out of those huge expenditures.
“This morning, I had to rely on a generator where I stayed; so, I am interested in what happened; that is where your committee comes in.”
She gave a breakdown of the budgetary allocations to the power ministry between 2004 and 2006, besides the money set aside for the NIPP.
In 2004, N54.6bn was voted for capital projects (N54.5bn released); recurrent expenditure was N4.3bn (N4.1bn released).
In 2005, the figure for capital expenditure was N91.1bn (N71.8bn released); while recurrent expenditure was N2.1bn (N3.6bn released).
For 2006, she said capital expenditure was N74.7bn (N74.7bn released); while recurrent expenditure was N3.3bn (N3.1bn).
In her own testimony, Ezekwesili admitted that there was no provision for waivers in the document which set out the ideals of due process.
She said, “We did not consider that any Federal Government project should be waived.
“That, for me, was an uncompromising stance.”
Ezekwesili, however, absolved herself of blame from the waivers Obasanjo granted, saying she had left the Due Process Office by the time the decision was taken.
Asked whether a company that was not registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission was qualified to be awarded contracts, she said that a “company without registration does not exist in the first place.”
The CAC confirmed two weeks ago that 34 of the firms that won the NIPP projects were not registered.
The committee and Ezekwesili had a long debate over the actual amount spent on the power sector between 1999 and 2007.
She insisted that it was $4bn and not the $16bn quoted by the panel, arguing that she would stick to the figure of the Central Bank of Nigeria ($4bn).
But when she was reminded that the CBN only quoted the figure released from its accounts and not from other government accounts lodged in other banks, the former minister stood her ground.