Harboursandport.com: Lagos ---- Following the controversy that is trailing the award of $44.86 million contract for the dredging of Warri port channel, management of the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA has said that there was no wrong doing on its past.
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| Managing Director of NPA, Hadiza Bala Usman |
A non-governmental organization, Cadrell Advocacy Centre, CAC has alleged that there is corruption in process leading to the award of the contract for the dredging of the Warri port channel dredging.
The group alleged that the Delta Ports dredging contract was fraudulently awarded to Dredging International Services Nigeria Limited (DISNL) – a company it claimed was convicted by a Swiss court in 2012 for bribery.
However, Managing Director of the NPA, Hadiza Bala Usman, said that the company indicted is a subsidiary of the international body that won the bid for the contract.
Usman made this known in Lagos said her management was aware of the case of corruption against a sister company of the one to which the Warri contract was awarded.
She explained that her management was aware of the allegation earlier on before the contract was awarded and had informed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE and other relevant bodies about the allegation.
According to her, “In the process of the award we had several petitions by a company alleging that we awarded the contract to a company that has been indicted, convicted for corruption.
During the tender process our attention was drawn to that while we were tending it, we now sought clarification from the company that you are said to have been convicted for corrupt practices relating to Nigerian ports.
“So it is interesting. I will just take you on this and will also discuss the issue surrounding the conviction. We wrote to them and they replied us sending us a legal document which sought of certified that they were not.
“We now attached those documents and submitted to BPE. So we were further mandated to do an independent investigation, so we hire a law firm and the law firm did an independent investigation whether they were convicted.
“The finding is that the company has a subsidiary which is a legal entity like the parent company, the subsidiary had partnered with us in one of our joint venture, the Bonny Channel Management Company, BCC.
“One of the subsidiaries does dredging in Africa and all over the world, so that company is the one that tendered for the contract, it is a legal entity. The company that was convicted was convicted for paying Nigerians, NPA staff and Federal government staff; we have people from the ministry, people from the advisers to the former President.
“I got the conviction document when they were convicted and I submitted to the EFCC saying this is the conviction document, this are the parties involved, this is the amount of money given, this are the people given, EFCC please go and investigate.
“One of the things the company said about the conviction was that we paid money to so and so people because they refused to sign our invoice unless we paid them. We have invoices for the work done but they would not pay.
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