Fed Govt Reviews 26 Water Contracts, Saves N53bn

The Federal Government on Monday announced that said it saved N53bn after carrying out a review of 26 water project contracts across the country.

Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, disclosed this in Abuja at the unveiling of his five-year compendium on water resources development in Nigeria.

He stated that after technical audit of projects under his ministry, it became necessary to undertake cost reviews of some major projects to enable contractors continue with their implementation to completion.

Adamu said, “To ensure value for money, contract revision requests were subjected to several layers of scrutiny, review and negotiation under the full watch of the Office of the Minister and relevant departments.

“The stringent processes enabled us to achieve substantial reduction on the request for contract review on 26 major projects thereby saving about N53bn on the costs of the contracts, even before review by the Bureau for Public Procurement.”

He added, “This achievement is profoundly significant to us in the ministry as it showcases prudent management of resources and high levels of transparency and accountability.”

The water minister explained that in 2016, the government commenced the technical audit and prioritised all the 116 uncompleted and abandoned projects.

Adamu said projects that were ascertained as non-viable were dropped completely, while the viable ones were completed.

He said, “Thus far, we have completed 30 of the high and medium priority projects and inaugurated about 10 of them.

“We hope to inaugurate many more soon as movement restrictions associated with COVID-19 pandemic abates.”