The procurement act of Osun State, 2015, makes clear provision for open competitive bidding for contracts. In the stead, contractors are allowed to bid for contracts and then after an open competitive bidding, the state government awards to the winning bidder, per provisions of the law.
The Osun State government may have violated its own procurement laws in the award of N700million contracts for rehabilitation of “Gof junction-Florentino School junction along Ori-Oke Oloruntosin, Ilupeju.
The procurement act of Osun State, 2015, makes clear provision for open competitive bidding for contracts. In the stead, contractors are allowed to bid for contracts and then after an open competitive bidding, the state government awards to the winning bidder, per provisions of the law.
Review shows that the state awarded three contracts for the same rehabilitation between July 2020 and April, 2021.
These contracts totalled N700.2million at N233.4million each.
In July, 2020, the state awarded a contract to the sum of N233.4million for rehabilitation of the road, the contract was awarded by the Osun state road maintenance agency but was not awarded to any company, instead it was carried out under Direct Labour.
On May 1, 2021, the Osun state government awarded another contract with the same contract description for rehabilitation of the road at the tune of N233.4 million. Two days later on May 3, 2021, the Osun state government awarded another contract for the same project at N233.4 million. These two contracts in three days were awarded by the state Ministry of Works and Transport
All of these contracts were awarded through direct labour without any competitive bidding, this a flagrant abuse of the Osun state procurement act, 2015.
While it remains unclear why the state awarded three contracts for the project, the only sizable explanation would be that the project was split into three and has a total execution value of N700.2 million.
The question then arises as to why the state government did not subject these huge amounts to competitive bidding instead chose to handle contracts of such amounts itself.
The law states the conditions for using of “Force contract (direct labour)
The provision states that such direct labour can be applied when the size, nature of the contracts are such that qualified contractors are unlikely to bid.
On the open contracting portal of the state, the state awarded less contracts to companies and as such, it was highly impossible that contractors would not bid for the award of a N700.1million contract.
Another provision was that such contracts can be awarded as direct labour, if there was a breach of earlier contracts awarded for the same purpose.
However, the first contract for the road rehabilitation was done by the Osun State Road Maintenance Agency as direct labour, so no company was awarded the contract.
The contract for these rehabilitation is not the only one awarded by the state, and it is unclear if each time the state government was to award contracts for the rehabilitation of this road, it does it as an emergency procurement, which is another basis by the government for the use of direct labour.
It may however be pulsating that rehabilitation of roads for three contracts would be emergency enough for the government to revert to direct labour for contracts totalling N700.2 million.
SaharaReporters reached out to the Osun state governor spokesperson, Olawale Rasheed, he asked SaharaReporters to send details of the contracts as he couldn’t comment on the development.
The information commissioner of the state Kolapo Alimi also noted that he couldn’t comment on the development because it didn’t happen under the administration.
He however asked SaharaReporters to send details of the story so he could send the contracts to the relevant agency for reply which may take up to two weeks.
Two of the contacts listed by the Osun State public procurement agency on its website were also said to be ineligible to receive calls while one contact continually was switched off as of the time of filing this report.
