Mr. Ja’afar Magaji, a federal lawmaker from Adamawa state and the Universal Basic Education (UBEC) in an example of what appears contract inflation have constructed a mini ICT centre for N100 million as a constituency project.
The ICT that had TG&TG Bright Nigeria Limited as its contractor was awarded by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).
Mr. Magaji, a federal lawmaker in the House of Representatives, had in 2020 using the UBEC, nominated the construction of ICT centre in Lamurde Mubi South Local Government Area of Adamawa State as a constituency project.
A project the federal government had in 2020 allocated the sum of N100 million while UBEC and the lawmaker had since carried out the project.
Tracka, a public accountability organization that was in the community to inspect the project, says it was poorly constructed, no ICT equipment supplied while it has remained under lock and key and not put to use.
Checks by MAWA FOUNDATION show that TG&TG Bright Nigeria Limited, a company that was awarded the construction of Adamawa ICT centre has no traceable online or physical address. An indication that points to the possibility of the company being fake.
Mr. Musa Mohammed, a civil engineer told MAWA N15 million is too much amount to build an ICT centre and that includes payment for labour and consultancy fees.
Also, Mr. Simon Nkedilim, a computer engineer, and ICT expert, who had handled contracts for equipping ICT centres, told MAWA, with N6.5 million, you can supply all computers, equipment and internet access needed to operate the centre.
Worse still, the UBEC and Adamawa lawmaker did not give a breakdown of how they arrived at constructing a mini ICT centre for a whopping N100 million.
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 through building local infrastructures.
However, Nigerian experience has shown that Lawmakers do not execute constituency projects as they appear in the national budget, and getting them to account for monies approved for such intervention is always difficult.
And, often, community residents are not aware such monies have been given to their representatives, and that makes accountability very difficult.
MAWA Foundation could not immediately reach out to UBEC and the lawmaker for a response.