The Civil Society Network Against Corruption (CSNAC) has urged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to investigate the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), over an alleged by-passing of procurement laws on contracts worth N717 billion.

In a petition signed by the coalition’s chairman, Mr. Olanrewaju Suraju, CSNAC said it is demanding an urgent investigation into the matter in order to entrench corruption free MDAs in Nigeria.

Taking its lead from the November 29, 2016 publication of an online newspaper, Premium Times newspaper, the coalition said the month-long investigation by the medium revealed how officials of NPA allegedly by-passed procurement laws to corner N717 billion worth of contracts.

It said that the investigation also detailed how NPA officials were allegedly found to have brazenly and fraudulently by-passed Nigeria’s public procurement law in awarding multi-billion Naira contracts to handpicked contractors.

CSNAC said: “It was discovered, according to the newspaper, that at least N717 billion in juicy contracts have so far been illegally awarded to a single contractor, violating the provision of the Nigerian Public Procurement Law (PPA) that says contracts of such magnitude should go through open competitive bidding.”

The PPA Act, enacted in 2007, prescribes principles by which public procurement entities within the various Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies should conduct their affairs.

“Despite the PPA Act, PremiumTimes disclosed how NPA officials carried out unparalleled impunity by ingeniously creating a way of circumventing Nigeria’s procurement regulations through carefully engineering what appears to be a fraudulent process of disguising contracts as Joint Venture projects between the authority and companies of their choosing. Whereby, the processes of choosing the joint venture partners are never thrown open as well as the procedures for awarding contracts to them,” the petition read.