The first National Assembly Management Tender’s Board meeting under the leadership of the Clerk to the National Assembly, CNA, Architect Amos Ojo, which held on Tuesday ran into a significant hitch, according to fresh feelers.
The meeting, which was convened by the CNA to ratify all the contracts he caused the management to award without the Board’s approvals and other expenditures that were made through anticipatory approvals, suffered a setback.
The Clerk to the Senate, El-Ladan Ibrahim, a lawyer, stormed out of the meeting in anger because the CNA wanted him to endorse contract documents purported to have emanated from his office.
Besides, he was said to have been presented with documents containing a series of contract jobs whose descriptions were strange to him.
He refused to endorse the document for the requisite ratification, which the CNA desperately needed to cure the mischief of all anticipatory approvals that he unilaterally gave for all contract expenditures since he stepped in the saddle in July 2020.
The Conclave gathered that ordinarily, each clerk of the two chambers was expected to make their presentations and defend every item before the board.
But, a source close to the Tuesday meeting who furnished The Conclave with this fresh fact, said that Clerk (Senate) declined to sign the contract documents purportedly executed because, according to him, he could not identify any of the job descriptions contained therein and because the document did not also emanate from him.
It was learnt that it was at that point that he stood up and stormed out of the meeting after making it clear that there was no way he would endorse contracts and documents, whose making he was not privy to.
He reportedly noted that as Clerk (Senate), all such contracts, in contention, should have been initiated by him and through his office.
There were indications on Wednesday that the refusal by the Clerk (Senate) to be used to ratify the illegality of the CNA’s anticipatory approvals might have caused a serious crisis in the NASS management.
The CNA is said to be under pressure to secure the Tender Board’s ratification to cure the mischief of the anticipatory approvals, which contravene the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
The contravention of the provision of the Act constitutes an offence, which attracts a jail term (five years) consequent upon conviction.
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