Mr. Dino Melaye, a former Nigerian Senator had facilitated a sine bore at the price of N19.7 million in Felele community in Lokoja, the Kogi state capital as a constituency project.
This is even as checks by MAWA FOUNDATION shows that drilling a single borehole in the community averages N600k. A hydrology firm told MAWA that amount is enough to drill about 10 boreholes in different communities across the Senatorial District.
The Felele borehole is very expansive and has no additional fittings that can justify such amount. Still, Dino Melaye claims that the project cost such amount.
Constituency projects are nominated by the lawmakers for the needs of their constituents and recommend same to the executive during budgeting, this will help to improve the living condition of the people in their constituents.
Constituency project is one area that has been identified as having a serious challenge in transparency and accountability.
For instance, in the 2017 National Budget, members of National Assembly allocated over 50% (N54 billion) zonal intervention projects to empowerment.
Analysts say the poor execution of projects, racketeering, inflation of contracts, and other contractual breaches are some of the factors responsible for Nigeria’s inability to achieve the set target constituency project is out to realize.
Residents of the area told MAWA that the borehole cannot be that amount as some other persons have installed a borehole in the community with N300k, and wondered why Dino and the agency that supervised the project will claim such amount for a single borehole.
Tracka officials that were in the community to inspect the project, said the borehole has been completed and put to use.