A Civil Society Organization, The Osun Masterminds (TOM), has approached the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), seeking a probe of alleged contract racketeering by the Osun state government.

A copy of the petition obtained by our correspondent in Osogbo, signed by the spokesperson of the group, Ayo Ologun, and received by the ICPC on 31st October 2023, alleged that the 332 borehole sunk by the government was in flagrant violation of the public procurement law and thereby appeared fraudulent.

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The group alleged that there was no budgetary provision for the borehole and Akoda-Okegada road project in the hometown of Governor Ademola Adeleke, saying “Neither did the state take a supplementary budget to the state Assembly nor advertised the projects for bidding before it was awarded.”

In a petition titled: Fraudulent Award of Contract by the Osun State Government,” the group urged the ICPC to investigate the governor and the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Works on why the company to whom the contract was awarded was not arrived any bidding at all, not even a “restricted bidding.”

“The company to whom the contract is awarded is not known to have any “special skills, experience, and proven track record over some time,” as stipulated in the Law.

“It is not established or in any way justified by the state government that the projects can be constructed by only a limited number of contractors, and that the engaged contractors are one of the said limited number of contractors, and that bids were invited from such limited number of contractors, as required by the Law.

“The state government parades a group of people and tags it the State’s Public Procurement Agency, but the purported ‘Agency’ is without the supervision of the Osun Public Procurement Agency Governing Board (“the Board”) to validate the Agency’s existence and operations, as required by the Law.

“The “No Objection/Due Process Certification” purportedly issued
by the “Agency” as now bandied by the state government, obviously to paper over her failure to follow the mandatory
the procedure laid down by the Law is unknown to the State of Osun Public Procurement Law, 2015 (which is the state’s extant law governing the subject of this petition),” the group said.

It, however, called in the commission to seek to know the governor’s and
the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Work’s relationship with the largest shareholder in the companies named for the two projects under searchlight, promising to appear before the commission to defend the petition if need be.