The Federal Government has reiterated commitment to maintain accountability, transparency and vigilance in expending public fund.
The Head Asset Recovery and Management Unit, Office of the Attorney General of the Federation Ladidi Mohammed gave the assurance on Thursday, 28th May, 2020 at a bidding on Consultancy service to undertake the monitoring of the implementation of the tripartite agreement on the sharing, transfer, disposition of repatriated assets which held at the Ministry’s Olusegun Obasanjo Auditorium in Abuja.
According to Mohammed, the ministry has resolved to involve the civil society organization who is to monitor the projects that the Abacha loot proceeds would be used for.
She said, “As part of our transparency agenda, there shall be an independent verification to ascertain whether or not the repatriated loot is judiciously utilized by the government.
“The bidding process shall be carried out in a transparency manner in line with the law, criteria and provisions. After the technical bid, People that meet the requirement would come for the financial bid and those not qualified would be communicated”.
“Everybody would be involved so that Nigerians would see what the government is doing. Some of the project concern is the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Abuja-Kano Expressway and the second Niger Bridge.”
According to her, the conclusion of the agreement was reached in 2019 with the USA, Bailiwick of Jersey for the repatriation of Abacha loot III with all the terms and conditions within a time limit.
“It was agreed that there is going be involvement of Civil Society in monitoring the implementation as they are also grassroots and they will be able to give independent assessments of what the money is actually used for”.
She explained. Ladidi said, both Nigerians and foreign companies participated in the Bidding, 16 companies after assessment according to BPP specified criteria were qualified while the remaining one was disqualified due to lateness in submission.
“Today Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) which is the National Body or Agency that is responsible for procurement is in charge of this process, they have already established link with the three Governments that’s, the FMOJ who is the authority that is representing the Government of Nigeria, USA and New Jersey” She added.
Speaking, the Director Infrastructure BPP Engr. Nasir Bello explained that, they have concluded the opening of the Technical Bids and everything went well”.
The next procedure now is to hand over the Technical documents to the Evaluation Committee in which they will see it and evaluate submission based on the criteria specified in the request for the proposal.”
He explained further that immediately after the evaluation, based on the agreement between the Federal Government of Nigeria, Ireland of Jersey and USA the evaluation report would be forwarded to the 2 other parties to concur with the outcome from the Nigerian part of the evaluation, those that are qualified or those that are pre- qualified would be invited to submit Financial Bids, in which the Bidders that would emerge the winner will be awarded the contract.
The names of the bidders are Triump Oil and Gas Nig. Ltd, International Action Centre, GPM Associates, Phenai Penal Consults Ltd, CLEEN Foundation, Anti-Corruption and Research based Data initiative, Public and Provate Dev. Centre, Arewa Community and Social Dev. Network in Nigeria, Quadrante, IBLF Global and PPP Advisories consortium. Others are Restitution impact Limited; Urban Project Prospects Integrated Service Ltd, Centre for Social Justice, Foundation for Public Private Partnerships, Nigeria and Global Society for anti-corruption.
