RECENTLY, the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) claimed to have spent the sum of N65 million on setting up a website. The media had reported how the said sum was appropriated and claimed to have been spent by the office in 2017. In a report which reviewed the 2017 budget performance of the office, the sum was found to have been budgeted for an already existing website, www.osgf.gov.ng. The office later claimed that N64, 855, 875, the sum released, had been fully utilised.
Lawrence Ojabo, the Director of Information to the SGF, Mr. Boss Mustapha, was said to have initially declined to provide the details of the expenditure. He, however, later in a statement, claimed that the website was currently undergoing the process of redesign and upgrading. “For purposes of clarification, the existing website, the screenshot of which was published by Premium Times, is undergoing redesign and upgrading to bring it in conformity with modern technology and requirements of the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. The OSGF is a critical hub of government that maintains a very high sense of accountability and transparency in all its transactions. The new website will further strengthen this core value as it will be built on the newest web technologies’ language, will be secured, fully managed locally, and hosted on a dedicated server. A new server infrastructure will be installed,” the statement said.
While giving details of the amount of money allegedly spent on the website, the SGF’s office said it would spend part of the fund on training of 50 people who would manage the website after it had been redesigned. According to it, “The consultants to the project will, in addition, train not less than 50 officers that will facilitate timely updates and ensure a very robust content management system.” The office also claimed that the award of the contract went through the due process. It said: ‘The award of the contract for the website followed the prerequisites of the Public Procurement Act 2007 before it was awarded on October 17, 2017. The emphasis of the OSGF under the leadership of Boss Mustapha on value for money and judicious application of public resources will never be vitiated for any reason.”
http://www.tribuneonlineng.com/grass-cutting-probe-i-dont-award-contracts-sgf/
The SGF office’s N65 million website seems to be another in the league of unjustifiably humongous dips into the public purse which have become a fad among Nigerian public offices. They assail the people with very unrealistic figures which make people to wonder whether their own procurements are done in Uranus while other Nigerians do theirs here on earth. Why a website which is hosted and designed with a few thousands of naira would go for N65 million still beats the imagination. Except there are gold trimmings and trappings surrounding the website that the SGF office is hosting, the N65 million appears to us as a metaphor for fraud, a refrain in government offices across Nigeria.
The SGF office’s defence of the said sum only worsens an already messed up equation. We wonder what business the 50 persons who are designated to man the operations of the website would really be doing. We make bold to say that there is no website administered by 50 persons anywhere on this planet. We are sure that there are already on the ground, staff of the office who are attached to its IT section. If the official blueprint is anything to go by, the number of people in this section is already full to the brim. To us, this looks like an escape, an omnibus veil to cover a clearly unjustifiable act. The SGF office’s claim sounds superfluous as Nigerians may not have the opportunity to ascertain whether indeed 50 people were recruited for this assignment or not. We recall that the office of a former governor of Lagos State, who is now the Minister of Works, Housing and Power, Babatunde Fashola, also claimed to have hosted a website with N78 million, a claim which attracted public uproar some years ago. The cries died down naturally and till today, there is no feedback to ascertain whether the fears of Nigerians that there was a circumscription of probity were ever allayed. Public officers must struggle to ensure that they do not leave doubts in the minds of the people, especially when it comes to spending public money. This particular procurement leaves more than a scintilla of doubt; it exudes an acrid smell of abuse of the norm and due process. For the Muhammadu Buhari government which is battling to explain suspected cases of corruption in the Presidency, this is another test case for its anti-corruption war. There is the need for a thorough investigation of this website upgrade so that the true colour of the transaction can be revealed to the Nigerian public.
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