$250,000 CONTRACT SCANDAL AT PHCN …NIGER DELTA GAS TURBINE PROJECT THREATENED
A $250,000 contract awarded to an ill-equipped Nigerian German businessman is now threatening the success of the multi-million dollar Gas Turbine Project meant for boosting power supply in the troubled Niger Delta oil producing area of Nigeria.
The Nigerian Government had in 2006 signed a major deal with the GE Energy of United States to supply 18 Gas Turbines, additional equipment and services for five power plants that would culminate in the generation and supply of about 2,000 megawatts to the country’s electricity grid.
The Gas Turbines manufactured by GE’s Gas Turbine factory in Greenville, South Carolina were meant to be distributed in the following cities in Niger Delta: Calabar, five gas turbines totaling over 564 megawatts, Eyaen near Benin City, four units, totaling over 451 megawatts, Sapele-Delta state, four units, totaling over 451 megawatts, Egbema in Imo state, three units, totaling over 338 megawatt, Gbarain/Ubie in Bayelsa state, two units, totaling over 225 megawatts. The Five Gas Turbines are also to harness Nigeria’s Gas reserves currently ranked tenth in the world.
GE Energy started making delivery between June and September 2006 thus raising the hope that Nigeria would soon begin to fulfill the manifest destiny on sustainable round –the-clock power generation.
But pointblanknews.com investigations revealed that some officials at PHCN may be working at cross-purposes with the broad objectives of rapid development being envisioned by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. At issue is a controversial $250,000 (N25 Million) contract recently given to a Nigerian Electrical Engineer based in Krummhoern, Germany.
The Nigerian born Mr. Saka Ikuye trained as an Electrical Engineer. He worked with defunct National Electric Power Authority, NEPA where he resigned and set sail for Germany with his family about 15 years ago. When he heard from his former colleagues who are still in active service with the new PHCN that succeeded ineffective NEPA, he hurriedly registered a company in Germany called Saka Ikuye Engineering and hurriedly expressed interest in making available his “expertise” in training personnel for the Gas Turbine Projects.
Meanwhile, the relevant training was to enable provision and building of Pile Foundation for the Gas Turbine Project.
Essentially, the Pile Foundation is a civil Engineering work. It was therefore difficult for some dissenting members of the tender’s board at PHCN why such a critical civil constructions job should be awarded to an Electrical Engineer. A U.S based Civil Engineering expert explained the nature of Pile Foundation to pointblanknews.com. The expert said: “Pile Foundations are the part of a structure used to carry and transfer the load of the structure to the bearing ground located at some depth below ground surface. The main components of the foundation are the pile cap and the piles. Piles are long and slender members which transfer the load to deeper soil or rock of high bearing capacity avoiding shallow soil of low bearing capacity.”
Poinblanknews.com gathered that although Mr. Ikuye was merely struggling to survive in Germany until the Gas Turbine Project came up, he was said to have hoodwinked and bamboozled the officials at PHCN that he had handled a similar project in Germany. He was said to have referred to the geological componential similarity between the mangrove swamp of the Niger Delta area and North West part of Germany popularly known as Ostfriesland.
One of the several whistleblowers who first drew the attention of pointblanknews.com to the false strategy employed by Ikuye to win the contract said that the contract could not have taken more that three weeks to complete, but that Ikuye in order to justify the over invoicing involve in the quotation for the job decided to deceive PHCN that it would take ten weeks.
Since it had been predetermined by Ikuye’s buddies that they would swing things in his favor, they pretended that they were meeting him half way and approved six weeks for the completion of the entire deal.
As soon as Ikuye was reimbursed he decided to make himself comfortable before executing the project. Hitherto, he had owned and driving a jalopy Ford for ten years. He decided to exfoliate and bought himself a 57, 000 Euro Mecedez Benz SUV. He previously had no private secretary in his 50 Square meter office space. He quickly hired one and furnished his office located at 25 Cirksane Street, 26736 Pewsum, Germany, exquisitely. He was said to have offered himself a soothing word “that is how my contemporaries enjoy in Nigeria.” Ikuye also created a website for his company in which the only experience he had in executing contracts is from the same PHCN job with no previous track record.
Pointblanknews.com gathered that Ikuye decided to engage the services of two well skilled Civil Engineering personnel. A German native and a Nigerian naturalized German citizen. The Nigerian German was said to have abandoned the project midway because of an “unfair treatment” while the German native remained. It was learnt that PHCN decided to send three senior Engineers for skill acquisition and maintenance training in Germany. The three Engineers, Baruck Iloabachie, 62, Engr. John Ikyembe, 51 and Godfrey Ognu, 41 arrived Germany October 12, 2007. The eldest of the three, Illoabachie, was given a whole room to himself in a five Star Hotel while the two others were paired together in one room.
In order to further fool his Nigerian clients, Ikuye decided to keep the three students longer than necessary. They completed their training on November 2, 2007, yet, they were kept until November 19, 2002 for a return trip Nigeria. While in Germany, their curriculum had to be patched and elongated to include crash program in German language three times a week, two hours each for 25 Euro per hour, about (N4, 500.00) and a frequent sight seeing trip around the city.
Pointlanknews.com gathered that prior to the departure of the three Nigerian Engineers, Ikuye with Iloabachie held a meeting where strategies were carefully planned out on how to present the sum of 137,000.00 Euro as cost of Hotel, Training, Upkeep, Transportation and Gate fees to PHCN to justify the $250,000 (N25 Million) awarded for the six weeks duration of the training.
