ABUJA — How did the 28 federal ministries, their departments and agencies under the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan incur a whopping N4 trillion contractual debt? Who issued the jobs and did they pass through due process and if so, did the contractors complete the assigned jobs?
These and more are the duties which a special task force to be raised by the Federal Government is to undertake before the debt could be classified as Federal Government liability and settled by the new administration.
The N4 trillion debt, which is nearly the country’s budget for one year, was handed over by the previous government to the present administration as part of the hand-over note given to the Transition Committee raised by President Muhammadu Buhari.
But after looking at the debt profile and not being able to establish its authenticity, the Transition Committee headed by Alhaji Ahmed Joda, has made a strong recommendation to President Buhari to raise a ministerial task force to probe how the huge debts were incurred in the first place.
The committee in its report sighted by Vanguard last night, noted: “The handover note from the previous administration showed an aggregate contractor liability of N4 trillion as at April 2015.
Buhari and Jonathan
“It is imperative that the administration establishes an inter-ministerial task force to review all outstanding contracts and associated liabilities across all ministries, departments and agencies.
“The mandate of the task force is to confirm the existence of the liabilities and authenticate the accuracy of the information provided in the handover notes.
“The government should only recognise the liabilities verified and confirmed by the task force.”
The Joda committee said it could not rely on the handover note it received from the Jonathan administration because of the fact that the specific dates when the contracts were awarded were not provided, thereby raising suspicion about their genuineness.
It noted: “A detailed list of contractors was not provided and therefore, some balances may be double counted, thereby, making contracts funded through debt to be captured by the Ministry of Finance and the contracting ministry.
“No documentation was provided to confirm if the projects were executed to agreed specifications while some contracts may have been cancelled or terminated,” the report noted.
Breakdown of the huge debts
A breakdown of the huge debts shows that the Ministry of Education topped the list with N1.2 trillion followed by Ministry of Finance with a debt of N467.7 billion while the Ministry of Niger Delta trailed with N389.2 million.
Other debtor ministries are: Power, N370 billion; Works, N296 billion; Transport, N289 billion and FCT, N194 billion.
Others are: Land and Housing, N151 billion; Aviation, N138 billion; Water Resources, N111 billion; National Sports Commission, N104 billion; Environment, N51 billion; Police Affairs, N36 billion and Health, N36 billion.
President Buhari had said in Washington last week that he would only take off after clearing the rot that has seriously affected governance in Nigeria.
Buhari said it would be wrong to allow his administration to run on the existing platform which had been seriously tainted by corruption, thereby drawing back the system.
But the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has criticised the Buhari administration for being slow and taking Nigeria backwards by not appointing ministers and other key government officials several months after assuming office.
The party said the APC government did not have a clear idea of what to do, thereby trying to buy time to waddle through.
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