The President, Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS), Mr Olayemi Shonubi, on Tuesday raised alarm over massive corruption in the execution of constituency projects in the nation.
Shonubi, during the Quarterly Interactive Forum organised by Property and Environment Writers’ Association of Nigeria (PEWAN) in Lagos, called for specific MDAs that would track and warehouse all constituency projects to curb leakages.
Citing several examples, he said several of the nation’s public procurement for constituency projects were marred with corruption and irregularities.
He said that several constituency projects awarded were made to look like conduit pipes, where funds were being siphoned because various projects were either non existent or cited far from where they were financed.
“There should be a specific MDA where all these projects should be warehoused, that is the way we can get value,” he said.
He said reports from the project tracking exercises organised by the ICPC in conjunction with NIQS and some CSOs, showed that “our public funded projects are still enmeshed in corruption.”
“In a situation where MDAs undertake projects outside their areas of operation leaves room for a lot of underhand deals aside from further increasing the administrative costs of running such projects.
“The private sectors’ situation, where no law binds the award and execution of contracts other than the basic corporate governance code, is more abysmal.
“However, because the spotlight is usually on the public sector, the tendency is to believe that corruption exist only in the public sector.
“There is the need for all procurements for constituency projects to be warehoused under a specific MDA for effective monitoring and supervision,” he said.
He lamented over low engagement of Quantity Surveyors in government and projects, adding that quantity surveyors helped to curb wastage, reduce cost of projects and eliminate corruption.
He also raised alarm over an ongoing trend in the nation’s built environment, where engineers had hijacked the roles of Quantity Surveyors, thereby creating a vacuum in the delivery of accurate quantities.
Shonubi explained that it was only in Nigeria that the Bill of Engineering Measurement Evacuation was used in contract awards instead of Bill of Quantity which only Quantity Surveyors could use to bring down the cost of projects.
He said the trend was difficult to correct because “once you have something that has become a norm it takes time to change”. (NAN)
