From Priscilla Ediare, Ado Ekiti
Accountability Lab Nigeria has lamented the poor implementation of some of the projects in the education and health sectors in Ekiti State.
The Country Director, Accountability Lab Nigeria, Mr Odeh Friday, made this known at a stakeholders’ forum on Open Contracting and Project Accountability held in Ado-Ekiti, capital of the state, where he disclosed that most of the government projects executed by contractors were of poor quality.
Accountability Lab, an initiative under the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) -funded Anti-Corruption and Innovation Project (ACIP) in partnership with the Ekiti State Government engaged stakeholders across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), legislators, community beneficiaries, media representatives, school principals, head masters/mistresses, health workers, Civil Society Organisations(CSOs), contractors and professional bodies, among others, in the state.
It explained that the meeting was organised to link public procurement data to services and enhance transparency, accountability, and governance in public projects, fostering a culture of improved and quality public service delivery, as well as, address the challenges identified in the course of monitoring the health and education projects in the state.
According to the Accountability Lab project monitors’ report, “out of the 24 projects monitored across the state, most of the projects implemented by the contractors were of poor quality, poor maintenance culture and have no sustainability plan.
“Some of the projects are dilapidated and the quality of work that has been done by the contractors needed to be improved upon.
” The project details and the contractors’ names differed from data provided by the implementing agencies. No assessments were conducted by the state government before awarding the projects.
” The Communities, their leaders, the school managements, and workers in charge of the primary health care centres had no idea of the project details to monitor its implementation.
“Some projects have no sign post showing details of the project, some of them have been completed for over five years but awaiting commissioning while some were built in inaccessible sites.”
On their part, some of the stakeholders from the education and health sectors expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the projects executed by the contractors. According to them, ‘”most of the projects are dilapidated, no toilet facilities, some toilets are not in use due to non-functional pumping machines, no motorised boreholes, some with motorised boreholes don’t have water running in the facilities, roofs of some of the classrooms and buildings are leaking, some have been blown away, premises don’t have perimeter fencing thereby exposing them to insecurity and unhealthy environments as yahoo boys and other unscrupulous persons come into the school.premises during school hours, smoke cigarettes, marijuana, harass students and teachers, defecate in the school premises, do rituals,.place sacrifices on the cemeteries in the school premises, etc.
Responding, a member of the Ekiti State House of Assembly and Chairman, House Committee.on Due Process and Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), Hon. Femi Fatunla, admonished the stakeholders “to endeavour to use the House of Assembly and Bureau of Public Procurement to address the issues.”
Speaking with newsmen, the Country Director said the Accountability Lab intends to achieve “a safe space where citizens can have conversations with the government, contractors and the media basically in the reportage. To ensure that open contracting on public procurement processes have a bit of citizens’ engagement, to help citizens build power, to not just report because they are the beneficiaries of these projects being implemented by the government, to ensure that the government’s projects serve them in a way that benefits them.”
On how the Accountability Lab will rate Ekiti State Government after the project monitoring report, in terms of project supervision and delivery, Odeh said, ” There is always room for improvements. We will always want things to get better. Part of the things we observed during most of the projects that were monitored across the state, the 24 projects across education and health, we observed that a couple of them have poor quality, we saw that some of them are dilapidated and the quality of work that has been done by the contractors need to be improved upon.
“Beyond just contracting the process, contracting circle for public procurement, just awarding contract is not enough but we need contractors and private sector organisations to be accountable and responsible for what they serve the people. You can see schools where there are no fences, you can see schools where the toilets are bad, even health care centres, these were awarded by the government to contractors but we need the quality to serve people.
“Part of the challenges we have seen is how this affect the health of people, not just the health but also the security in terms of schools. Some people mentioned some yahoo boys and riff raffs get into the schools during school hours to harass not just the students even the teachers, the security concern is also priority, we are pushing that to the government as an advocacy to see that they address some of these issues not just at the procurement level but beyond the procurement level.
“We are also glad to see that some people came from the State House of Assembly, the Chairman, House Committee on Due Process and Sustainable Development Goals was also part of this meeting and also committed to this process to see that the conversations will continue to go on and he has pledged his support for the project as well and we will continue to engage him further.”
On whether the organisation has presented any document to the government regarding the projects monitored, Odeh remarked, ” We have already sent the publications which we did for the projects that were monitored by the project monitors and that has been distributed across the MDAs in Ekiti State and we also have commitment from the DG, Bureau of Public Procurement in the state who is also going to develop the report for the state government and he assured us that actions will be taken appropriately.”
The Director General /Special Adviser, Ekiti State Bureau of Public Procurement(BPP), Mr James Folorunso, in his remarks, commended Accountability Lab for generating the feedback mechanism on government-funded projects to ensure transparency and accountability.
He restated the commitment of his agency towards achieving the shared prosperity agenda of the state Governor, Mr Biodun Oyebanji, and promised to use his office to strengthen the implementation aspect of the capital projects in the state to make sure that there is value for the money expended on projects.
“I want to say that Governor Biodun Oyebanji’s administration has the mandate to deliver the dividends of democracy to Ekiti people and we are all aware of the mantra of this administration which is shared prosperity.
“We are going to be improving what we met on ground and from the Bureau of Public Procurement, it’s for us to strengthen the procurement and implementation aspect of the capital project to make sure that there is value for money.
“We will make sure that whatsoever government is committed to, is actually actualised.
“We are going to be following the works of the contractors, we will follow up the MDAs involved in release of funds to make sure that this circle of project implementation is completed.”