FIJ
A construction manager has lamented how corruption in Nigeria’s civil service has forced him to reject a road project worth N8million at Nuru-Oniwo, Surulere area of Lagos.
The contractor, simply identified as @Clan_Clueless on Twitter, said the road construction was awarded for N8million but staff within the government agency offered to pay him a meagre N300,000.
“My quotation was initially three million but it was negotiated to N800,000. I wasn’t going to take it but my contact within convinced me to collect it on the promise for more opportunities to come,” he said.
“I was still contemplating accepting the money when I was told I would be given only N300,000.”
The unjustifiable bargain, the contractor, told FIJ discouraged him from accepting the contract but a few months after, he learnt the same project had been announced for bidding in the newspapers at the cost of N8million.
He added that he had “since then never looked in the direction of government contracts”.
When he first tweeted about his experience on social media, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) responded by asking him to forward a petition to the anti-graft agency but he told FIJ he would not be taking up the case.
Transparency International recently ranked Nigeria as the second most corrupt country in West Africa. A careful look at TI’s 2020 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), however, revealed that public sector corruption was to a large extent responsible for Nigeria’s poor ranking.
From 136th position out of the 176 countries surveyed worldwide in 2014 to 146th out of 180 countries in 2019, Nigeria has systemically slid down Transparency International’s corruption ladder under the watch of President Muhammadu Buhari, whose most prominent campaign mantra was “war against corruption”.
