The above contract was awarded to Messrs. Simoka Marine Ltd at the contract sum of N4,731,900,048.33 for the construction of Nigerian Army Jetty, Uvwie LGA Delta State vide contract Ref No. NDDC/EDO/DEL/PR/012/0020 dated April 20, 2012. The following observations were made;
(a) The Commission awarded this contract without recourse to due process: There was no evidence of any advert placement on National Dailies, no bidding submitted by competitors, no prequalification and evaluations of bids carried out etc. Thus, this award contravenes the PPA 2007 & FR 2921 which requires “all contractors/ suppliers shall be subjected to the same level playing ground”.
(b) The Contract sum of N4,731,900,048.33 approved and awarded by the Parastatals Tenders Board is in aberration to the PPA 2007 as it was above its approval threshold which could require the BPP certificate of ‘No objection’. The approval of the Federal Executive Council should have been obtained before the award of such contract. Hence, it violates PPA 2007 & FR section 2906 which states that “all contracts or tenders falling within the limits of the threshold prescribed by the Bureau of Public Procurements, except as exempted under the Act, shall attract a “Certificate of ‘no objection’ to award contract for such, to be validly executed”.
(c) The provisional sum of N61,968,000.00 released to the contractor for the procurement of projects vehicles and compensations could not be justified as there was no documentary evidence for the judicious utilization of this amount. Thus, this payment violates the Financial Regulation No 3104 which requires that under no circumstance should payment be made for job not executed and any amount involved shall be recovered from the said contractor and shall be blacklisted and referred to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for prosecution.
(d) Inspection visit revealed that the contractor was not fully on ground as there were only skeletal activities ongoing on sight and the consultant was totally absent on the project as there was no office accommodation in which the consultants operates.

Risk
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 should be sanctioned for non-compliance with due process in the award of contract to Messrs. Simoka Marine Nig Ltd.
The sum of N61,968,000.00 expended on compensation and procurement of three project vehicles should be recovered from the contractor/ consultant.