Contractors demanding payments for abandoned projects in Maritime Academy ― Rector

Contractors handling abandoned projects at the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN) have written to the management of the school, demanding payments for work not completed, the school management revealed over the weekend during a press briefing held in Lagos.

Addressing maritime journalists in Lagos, the Rector of the Academy, Commodore Duja Effedua revealed that he has been receiving death threats from unknown persons over his refusal to allow them to loot the school’s treasury.

According to Commodore Effedua, “I have been the Rector of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria for the past three years and four months, and I have just about four months more to round up my tenure in office. For decades after its establishment, corrupt practices orchestrated from within and outside the academy have contributed largely to the decadence of the academy before the 2017 Federal Ministry of Transportation intervention.

“On assumption of office in 2017, I met an academy that was a contractor’s haven. Most of the workers of the academy were contractors. The funny thing is that contracts will be awarded and they will not be executed, but paper works will be issued for the evaluation of works not done. Abandoned contracts still at 15 percent will be evaluated 90 percent completed when in actual fact, nothing has been done, and payments will be made for jobs not done.

“Due to this arrangement, there were so many abandoned projects, but most of them had been paid for by the academy and their paper works completed in-house. These contributed to the huge debt profile of the academy.

“Aside completing most of the abandoned projects after we came onboard in 2017, we have also initiated new projects like the nautical building which was totally abandoned and paid for, for over 19 years. We are dealing with a lot of abandoned projects, with contractors insisting that we pay them for jobs that are poorly executed.

“So what they could not achieve in 39 years, I have achieved in three years. Why did I achieve those things? Because I said no to money sharing. I blocked leakages. Now I have become the enemy of states.

“Every day, when they wake up, their good morning is what can we find on this man? They have been sending me messages that if I don’t corporate, that they will assassinate me.

“These people are everywhere. They want to reap where they did not sow. Imagine somebody telling me to bring N250 million to avoid character assassination through frivolous petitions. They even wrote that I used N9 million to feed my dogs. These people cook up lies a lot, and this is a psychological problem because they are frustrated. A lot of them were employed in the era of massive corruption and they think it is normal. That is why they are finding it abnormal now.

“You (journalists) didn’t even ask me how I got the money to buy the simulators for the academy? It is the leakages that they have been stealing that we blocked. In one year and six months, I was able to save N1.8 billion through the blockage of leakages.

“These are monies that would have been stolen and that is why these vultures are writing all these fake petitions and imagining things. We paid for all the simulators without any stress. 70 percent to 80 percent of the monies that comes to the academy is shared, looted out or siphoned through fake contracts. That is why they see me as a stumbling block and they have held meetings that I have to go.”

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