The State House under Bola Tinubu has violated Nigerian procurement laws by awarding contracts to a company that is listed as inactive by the corporate affairs commission.
The company “Rock of Ages Total Events Centre limited” got contracts worth N224.4 million for items such as decoration of the State House and other services not mentioned.
An inactive company is one that has failed to file its returns, lawyers told SaharaReporters that it is inappropriate for a company listed as inactive to be awarded contracts.
The procurement law of the country, in section 8(d) mandates that the bidder for a contract or the organisation that would be awarded a contract should not default in payment of taxes or other financial expectations.
According to report, on 17th of March, the organisation got N12.5million, for services rendered to the State House, Abuja.
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On the same March 17th, the firm received N12.9million for a two days event held by the minimum wage committee; what the money was used for wasn’t disclosed.
The state house paid the firm another N28.4 million for services rendered during the 85th birthday of Chief Bisi Akande while another N8.7 million was paid when the State House hosted the children’s Christmas party.
On 17th of May, the firm received N22.5 million for the decoration of a new banquet hall.
SaharaReporters checked the federal contractors portal of the Bureau of Public Procurement and found no record of the organisation.
SaharaReporters went further and checked the social media pages of the organisation to seek comments and afterwards called the phone contact listed on the Instagram page of the organisation. While the recipient didn’t state his name, he acknowledged the fact that he was the co-owner of the organisation.
He asked SaharaReporters to call him back after failing to defend his company’s inactiveness on the CAC website, despite stating that they file annual returns.
Despite calling him back after the stipulated time which he asked for such, he did not pick his call again nor returned it as of the time of this report.
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