Don’t Abandon Jonathan’s Projects, Policies, Senate Tells Buhari

The Senate, yesterday, warned President Muhammadu Buhari against abandoning the projects and policies of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo; late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and his immediate predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan against the backdrop that government is a continuum.
According to the Senate, the warning became imperative because of its determination to cut down on wasteful spending by government.
Speaking in Abuja during an investigative hearing on the abandonment of N8billion Code of Conduct Bureau Office headquarters, organized by the Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory, Chairman of the Committee, Senator Dino Melaye (APC, Kogi-West), stressed that the alarming increase in the number of abandoned projects has become a great concern to well-meaning Nigerians who see the need for such projects to be completed by the various governments that initiated them from the beginning.
According to Melaye, “as soon as these programmes and projects are abandoned, new ones are initiated only to be abandoned again by yet another successive government. The process continues while the nation’s resources continue to be wasted.
“It is instructive to state that this is not so with the developed countries. Projects and programmes, as well as policies are sustained. They place nation’s interest above other considerations. This sustainable policy has yielded positive results as these countries have moved from developing to developed world.”
Melaye while reminding the present administration of its commitment as an advocate of change, however, charged Buhari’s government “to right all administrative wrongs championed by past administrations”.
Lamenting the rate at which projects across the country were abandoned by successive governments since 1999, Melaye said, “the Senate was utterly dismayed when it received a motion in respect of the abandonment of N8billion Code of Conduct Bureau office headquarters projects”.
Chairman of the Code of Conduct Bureau, Mr. Sam Saba, who came under fire over the bureau’s decision to abandon a building project already budgeted for, was charged by members of the committee to ensure its completion by pushing for its inclusion in the 2017 budget.
A member of the committee and Deputy Chief Whip of the Senate, Francis Alimikhena (APC, Edo-North), who objected to the procurement of a new office building for CCB, told the chairman that the abandonment of the initial building project was an indication that it was conceived to fail.
Alimikhena said, “From the way things were done fromý the beginning, I think the project was conceived to fail. In 2010, N3billion was projected for the project. And then the amount was reviewed in 2012 to N8billion; that is after spending over N1billion. You decided to dump the contract and procure the same office building for N4.4 billion. Is this not waste?”, the lawmaker queried.
The Senate asked the code of conduct bureau to consider completing the office project initially conceived by mobilizing experienced contractors back to site.
At the end of the day, the committee directed the code of conduct bureau to within 48hours, furnish it with documents showing proof of agreement entered into with consultants responsible for valuing the project for construction of its office building.