Many streets in Gashua, the hometown of Nigerian Senate President Ahmed Lawan, are dotted with at least one source of drinking water, offering the city’s citizens smart water to clean up.
However, some portions of the network are dirty due to the poor attitude of many citizens towards sanitation. The stench of human and animal waste oozes out into neighborhoods while garbage poorly blocks drainage on roads.
Many houses lack toilets, forcing citizens to defecate in the open.
The city of the Baden Local Government Area has six districts, which can be classified into slums and cities.
The federal government executed some drinking water services to supplement drinking water in the city at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The federal government has funded at least 14 solar-powered drillings in Gashua with the COVID-19 Response Fund, otherwise known as the CACOVID Fund.
The CACOVID fund was donated by N40 billion through corporations and Americans at the height of COVID-19 in Nigeria in 2020, under the name “Private Sector Coalition Against COVID-19”, to help the country fight the pandemic. The fund went to the country’s fitness formula and other critical desires in the communities.
However, many citizens of Gashua say that the president of the Senate financed the water source project of their city. In fact, each water well has a giant panel with inscriptions showing it as the sponsor of the project.
The commission complements those already executed through the Ministries of Energy, Public Works and Housing, Agriculture and Rural Development, Water Resources, progressive partners such as the European Union and some non-governmental organizations that support those affected by the insurgency in the Northeast in the community. In addition, some citizens have invested in drinking water, which they sell to the public.
Access to safe drinking water is the key to smart hygiene practices, but the availability of safe drinking water has not had an effect on smart hygiene in several parts of Gashua.
The sixth purpose of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to end the global water and sanitation crisis. Communities like Gashua can prevent Nigeria from achieving its purpose if the challenge persists.
In April, the journalist went to investigate a contract awarded through the Federal Ministry of Water Resources to a water drilling company, Yubar Consultants Ltd, with the COVID-19 Response Fund, in Gashua. The research followed similar reports about federal medical centers, Jalingo and Makurdi, Jos University Hospital (JUTH) and Modibbo Adama Yola University Hospital (see reports in embedded links) when it looked at water projects pointing to Lawan as the godfather.
An in-depth review of the Federal Government’s Open Contracts Portal (NOCOPO) that the Ministry of Water awarded the contract to water from its percentage of the CACOVID fund at N492. 6 million (N492,603,237. 00).
The reporter saw water flowing through Gashua’s 14 sun wells. Some families brought water into their homes with pipes.
Why senate president is indexed as sponsor of the bill
A director of one of the corporations that executed the assignment, Yahaya Barambu, told CIIR that through the federal Ministry of Water Resources his company had been told to grant sponsorship of the allocation to the president of the Senate because he is in his city.
“It is the ministry that told us that the user who facilitated the assignment is the president of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan. It is their local government. They said that every time you make an assignment, it is the branch that will give you the signal design. We made the signal based on what we were asked to do.
“They said they were the ones who funded the project, but they didn’t say Ahmed Lawan funded the project. They said Ahmed Lawan was a contract facilitator.
The use of sponsor instead of deceptive facilitator because the citizens interviewed believed that the president of the Senate invested in the project.
Hassan Lawan, former president of the Local Government of Jakusko and resident of Gashua, among those who spoke to CIRR in a way that showed that the President of the Senate had funded the project.
“The president of the Senate has done a job in the domain of rural development, especially in the water supply,” he said.
He added: “Before the start of this project, we had a challenge with drinking water. There were once many waterborne diseases due to the lack of drinking water supply.
“But from your water project, there’s nothing like waterborne diseases. There is nothing like cholera and gastrointestinal diseases.
“This source of water made available through the President of the Senate in our communities has touched the lives of many people. “
He noted that other people were lining up to get water before the assignment arrived in the city.
Saleh Musa, Adamu Jawi, Rabiu Nadada, Ahmed Murtala, Abba Kura, Ibrahim Muhammed and Haruna Yahaya also congratulated the Senate president on the bill. There were also young people who thought Lawan had funded the project.
Water services are located in Abbatoir, Katuzu One, Katuzu Three, Lawan Fannami, Market Area, Central Mosque, Fire Service, Lawan Musa Two, Zango, Abuja Amare One, Abuja Amare Two, Garin Lamido, Federal University and Federal University Extension.
Mother of the businessman on the drilling wells dug with 492. 6 million naira
Returning to investigation number one, Yubar Consultants Ltd refused to provide the number of wells it built with the N492. 6 (492,603,237. 00), the Ministry of Water Resources said it had paid for the contract.
When the ICIR reporter contacted Barambu, whom the company had commissioned to tell him about the contract, he did provide the number. He ordered the journalist to unload the main points of the Ministry of Water Resources.
The journalist also asked him to check whether the ministry had paid his company N492. 6 million as he claimed. Barambu said the ministry could give an answer.
Several CIIR reports show how public officials collude with contractors to obtain cash loans for public works or fail to comply with procurement standards.
For example, reports on “How JUTH ignored procurement rules in THE N853 million COVID-19 fund,” “COVID-19: Nigeria’s fitness company is accumulating data on N444 million contract awards,” “COVID-19: More than N22. 58 billion shared among 21 hospital teachers,” and “COVID-19 Fund: NCDC spends N202 million on six pieces without a source plan” are some of this journal’s investigations into the imaginable mismanagement of the fund through the government.
Slaughterhouse drilling does work, threatens business
When the journalist visited the site, meat vendors at the Gashua slaughterhouse denounced the lack of water.
Only one in 3 manual pump wells is working. Solar-powered drilling dug with COVID-19 cash in the slaughterhouse does not work.
Several meat vendors, the vice president of the slaughterhouse, Mohammadu Dangari, the youth president Kabiru Aminu, Isah Jibril and Bukar Ahmed, lamented the lack of water.
Water vendors smiled at their homes from the slaughterhouse, but meat vendors were not satisfied because they paid for water to do their jobs after paying taxes to the government.
They pay the local government of Baden for the animals they slaughter and expect the government to supply enough water to the slaughterhouse.
In addition, meat vendors expressed their displeasure that one of the five local government workers assigned to clean the slaughterhouse.
Abdullahi Umar collects the tax at the slaughterhouse on behalf of the government.
He said the rates N100 for a cow and N50 for a goat and a sheep.
Unlike other slaughterhouses served with enough blank water, the Gashua slaughterhouse has a foul smell due to insufficient water supply.
Residents told us about non-functional drilling – Contractor
Barambu said his company is not to blame for 3 of the wells that do not supply water.
He said the network had informed his company.
According to him, every contract has a “defect liability period”, in which contractors and establishments entrusting them with paints practice the capacity or quality of the finished paints before the contractors get full payment.
He said all the amenities served the network paintings well and that the government was satisfied with the paintings after his company finished the project.
He said his company executed the assignment of supervision of the ministry and Yobe State.
About the contractor
Yubar Consultants Ltd was registered as a personal limited liability company on February 7, 2013, with registration number 1095144.
Its address is at number 5, GRA Road, opposite Government House, Gombe, Gombe State.
The shareholders of the company are Usman, Sanusi, Nafiu, Alamin, Abubakar and Yahaya, all named after their families, Barambu.
Public domain on corporate claims that all administrators are engineers, with the exception of Usman and Yahaya, surveyor and builder, respectively.
Meanwhile, up to 150 citizens of Gashua, Yobe State, die each year of kidney disease, CITRI has learned.
Anwali Ahmad, head of the Chemical Pathology Unit at Gashau Specialty Hospital, told CIIR that many citizens die from chronic kidney disease because the food they eat stagnates with chemicals. Read the full report here.