Pre-shipment contracts signed 3 ‎days before end of Jonathan’s tenure

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8 years ago

A Company that benefited from the pre-shipment inspection contracts of crude oil terminated by the Ministry of Finance in 2015 on Tuesday claimed that, it got presidential approvals, 3 days to the end of the Goodluck Jonathan administration.

The Managing Director of Arlington Securitas, Mr Muhammad Wanka told the House of Representatives Committee on Public Procurement investigating alleged infraction in the pre-shipment contracts worth billions of dollars.

The Managing Director of the company stated this at the ongoing investigative hearing into the alleged abuse, breach and violation of the Public Procurement Act, 2007 as well as delay in carrying out a presidential directive on a procurement process two years after.

During cross examination by the House committee chaired by Hon. Wole Oke, the Managing Director of the company said that the pre-shipment contract which authorised his firm to carry out inspections was approved 3 days to the expiration of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

Mr Wanka who told the committee that the contract was unlawfully terminated in September 2015 by the Ministry of Finance after being approved on May 26, 2015.

He however informed the committee that despite the said termination his company did not stop working since the approval was for two years.

But when the committee probed further on which president signed the said approval, Mr Wanka said “it must have been President Jonathan, but I didn’t see the approval letter, we were only given the contract papers which we signed.”

‎Also at the hearing, the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) submission to the committee contradicted the claims made by the Bureau for Public Procurement on the pre-qualification of companies for pre-shipment inspection.

The Director General of the Bureau, Mamman Ahmad had submitted that approvals were given to companies based on verification of their particulars, including compliance certificates issued by NSITF.

But the Managing Director of NSITF, Mr Adebayo Somefun disagreed with his BPP counterpart, suggesting that majority of the companies approved for pre-shipment inspection did not meet minimum requirements for qualification.