Jonathan pegs augmentation at 15% of original contracts cost

President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday handed down a directive to all members of Federal Executive Council to henceforth not bring any augmentation to council that is beyond 15 per cent of the original cost of the projects.

Jonathan who presided over the yesterday’s Council meeting according to the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, frowned at a situation in which sometimes augmentation or variations of contracts end up being higher than the original contracts awarded.

“Mr President believes that if MDA’s do their jobs thoroughly through proper planning and of course cost evaluation before award the incidence of half valuation of contracts will be avoided and so he gave a directive that henceforth any MDA that has any variation on a contract that goes beyond 15 per cent should not present it to council unless that variation has the President’s personal approval.

“Mr. President also directed the BPP not to entertain any application for valuation of contracts that exceed 15 per cent of the original cost and he also insisted that ministers and agencies of government must ensure that in giving awards of contract we verify the actual workload that is expected, we ensure proper valuation of our projects so that we will not continue with this pattern of variation of contracts that sometimes go so high as 100 per cent of the original contract awarded.

“So it is expected that all agencies of government who are in the process of giving awards for contracts must make sure that they are thorough in the pre-plan for those projects and also ensure that the costing is professional to avoid variations that go very high and leave cost to the government”.

Council also approved the provision of roads and engineering infrastructure to new layout and diplomatic area as Phase II contract of the ongoing Guzape Lot II District infrastructure in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Minister of FCT, Bala Mohammed said the areas were laid out and allocated in 2005 to meet the aspirations of members of the National Assembly, well placed Nigerians, diplomatic missions and some members of the general public.

“The projected employment generation opportunity that would emanate from construction activities following the implementation of the project is expected to be in the neighbourhood of 600 employees.

“After deliberations and consideration, council approved the provision of roads and engineering infrastructure to New Layout and Diplomatic Area Phase II contract of the ongoing Guzape Lot II District Infrastructure in favour of Messrs Gilmor Engineering (Nigeria) Limited in the sum of N22,609,597,253.04 with a completion period of three months”.