The Commission awarded the above contract at a price of ₦421,921,233.00 to Messer Timipah Ifidi and Sons Ltd on May 28, 2012 for the construction of NDDC Bayelsa State office building project Yenegoa. From review of the project file, we observed that there was no open competitive bidding in the selection and award of this contract. This contravenes PPA 2007 and Financial Regulations No 2921 which states that “all procurements of goods, works and services shall be by way of Open Competitive Bidding by which is meant that all contractors/ suppliers shall be subjected to the same level playing ground. The format for submission of bids, the deadline for submission and the pre-determined criteria for evaluation shall not vary from one contractor/ supplier to the other; they shall be the same”. Audit enquiry revealed that the Commission mobilized the contractor with the sum of N63,288,185.01 but inspection visit however revealed that the said building has long been abandoned at foundation level without value for money.

Risk
There is a risk of absence of adherence to government rules as regards due process in procurement. Absence of due process may lead to poor job execution/performance, project delay, related party transactions, poor job delivery, project abandonment, non-execution of jobs and loss of public funds.

Recommendations
The management is required to justify the basis (if any) for non-compliance with due process in the award of the contract, failure of which appropriate sanctions would be applied.
The Contractor should be compelled to return to site, otherwise, the mobilization fees of N63,288,185.01 paid should be recovered from the contractor with evidence forwarded to the Office of the Auditor-General for Federation for verification.