The House of Representatives on Tuesday resolved to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the activities of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA), over allegations of what it describes as “monumental” fraud in the agency.
The House therefore resolved to set up an adhoc committee to investigate the agency’s activities from 2019 till date and report back to it within 6(weeks).
These resokutions followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance on the “need to investigate the monumental fraud and illegalities going on at the Federal Road Maintenance Agency of Nigeria(FERMA)”, brought by the House Minority Leader, Hon. Ndudi Godwin Elumelu (PDP, Delta).
The opposition leader in the motion noted that “the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) was established in 2002 with a mandate to efficiently and effectively monitor as well as the maintenance of all federal roads in Nigeria with an objective of keeping all the roads in good and safe condition at all time.”
He further noted that “the agency is under the supervision of the ministry of works.”
He said: “While billions of naira is voted to FERMA yearly for purposes of road maintenance, the federal roads across the country are nothing to write home about as most of them have become death traps, killing hundreds of Nigerians yearly as a result of poor conditions of our roads.”
According to him, “FERMA which was set up to ameliorate the sufferings of Nigeria’s road users is alleged to be enmeshed in serious corrupt practices by the management.”
The lawmaker said it is disturbing that “the corrupt practices includes high handedness by the leadership of the agency, over inflation of contracts, award of non existent contracts, massive splitting of jobs and flagrant disregard for procurement laws in the award of contracts and in most cases, refuse to implement the budget in full thereby doing selective implementation of the budget.”
“…there are allegations of intentional delays in awarding contracts for road repairs and construction several months after bidding had been completed and successful bidders have emerged, thereby compounding problems for Nigerian road users and sabotaging the effort of government.
“…most of these contracts are alleged to have been cornered by the management for themselves and their cronies who abandons site after collecting reasonable percentage of advance payment of contract sum,” he said.
The motion cautioned that “if these spate of unbridled pilfery by top government officials is allowed to fester and unchecked, it will not only drain the national purse but discredit the perceived fight against corruption by this government in the eyes of the international community, hence the need for this motion.”
It was unanimously adopted as passed.