Despite his indictment, Mr. Anenih has now been appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan to head the NPA board.

Tony Anenih, recently re-appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan to head the board of the Nigeria Ports Authority, NPA, does not have a clean past in managing public funds, a 2009 senate report said.

In December 2009, a damning report detailing how Mr. Anenih, a former works minister and then leader of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), allegedly mismanaged billions of naira meant for the rehabilitation and construction of Nigerian roads, was listed for debate – for the third time in a row – by the Senate.

The transport probe report is filled with revelations of alleged serial malpractices, and shows how, in 10 years (1999 to 2009), through multiple contract inflation frauds, connivance between contractors and government officials, some N645 billion was spent on 4,752 kilometres of road; shortchanging the government to the tune of N49 million on each kilometre of road worked on, amounting to approximately N233 billion.

The report, produced by a senate ad-hoc committee on transportation, led by Heineken Lokpobiri, blamed Anenih and his successors in the ministry, for the poor state of Nigerian highways during the period and called for their prosecution.

The report

The report shows that Nigeria’s public transportation sector, under the watch of Mr. Anenih and three others, was a cesspit of monumental corruption and fraud as contractors connived with government officials to defraud the country.

The report contains details of what its authors said was one of the nation’s largest portfolio of official scams at the time.
During its 20-day sitting in 2008, the ad-hoc committee said it scrutinised 532 written memoranda and listened to 248 presentations.

The committee said ministers and other senior officials of the ministries of transportation and Finance between 1999 and 2009 awarded multiple contracts for the same roads and paid for unapproved contracts.

According to the report, between 1999 and 2009, the ministry of transportation gave contracts for the construction and rehabilitation of 11, 591 km roads at a cost of N1.008 trillion – about N87 million per km.

During the same period, only 41 per cent of the roads were worked on, after close to 64 per cent of the contract value was paid.

In the 10-year period, work was done on only 4,752 kilometres of roads for N645.8 billion, at very high cost of N135.8 million per kilometre, defrauding the government N49 million on each kilometre.

“There was no commensurate value for funds expended on the roads from 1999 to 2009,” the committee said.

The committee said contractors, who were usually selected on questionable grounds, liaised with the leadership of the ministries and reduced the scope of awarded contracts without an equivalent scaling down on costs. In all cases, no one received any query from the internal audit.

The report said that under the reign of Tony Anenih, Adeseye Ogunlewe, Obafemi Anibaba and Cornelius Adebayo, road contracts were awarded depending only on estimates that were submitted by the bidding contractors, without prior design by the ministry.

The ministry also “fixed prices even before the roads were actually designed by the companies,” the report said.

The report detailed how about half – 46 per cent – of the companies that got jobs under Mr. Anenih and the three were not registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission at the time they were awarded contracts, against contract management rules.

It described the engineering representatives of the transport ministry as some of the most corrupt and lacking in technical expertise. “They granted clearances to the contractors when the jobs were far from finished,” the report said.

The current Petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who – as minister of Transportation and Works – literally wept while inspecting the condition of the Benin-Ore road, was also indicted in the report.

The panel said Mrs. Alison-Madueke paid more than N1.2 billion into the private account of a company called Digital Toll Gates Limited, against the written advice of the Due Process Office.

Recommended for prosecution

The senators recommended that Tony Anenih, Adeseye Ogunlewe, Obafemi Anibaba and Cornelius Adebayo, who headed the transport ministry within that period, along with their Ministers of State and the Permanent Secretaries be prosecuted by the government for defrauding the nation.

The report also recommended the prosecution of Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, who was the permanent secretary during the administration of all the ministers except Mr. Anenih’s. He was alleged to have crafted a means of splitting contracts into sizeable amounts to bring the values within the approving authority of his office. With this, projects with single appropriation were allegedly awarded by him separately sometimes to non-existing companies.

Swept under the carpet

That report was never considered on the floor of the senate.

The report, which took the ad hoc committee 18 months to produce, kept appearing on the senate’s order paper as a matter to be considered at the next plenary till February 2010 when it was again listed to be debated and adopted in March. That was its last listing before that senate session ended in June 2011.
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The only thing they are good at is loot the nation dry.They do each other favours by compasating each other with nigerians hot sweat,nigerians blood.

They are blood suckers and the populace are mesmerized and spellbound.

This is not news again in Nigeria. Jonathan have made corruption official in his administration. When Tunde bakare said that jonathan's destiny is to bankrupt Nigeria, little did we know that Tunde was saying the truth.85% of those in jonathan's government today have many questions to answer in terms of corruption.

Na wa oh!

Am tired of reading stories like this.it makes me sick of nigeria.today i was in tradefair,lagos and people are looking so miserable,impoverished and frustrated.am getting home now,turned on d t.v and saw house of rep criminals ranting.i turned off the tv because none of them are worth listening to,more so its not edifying,now checking nairaland again and seeing this.this is 2013 we are stepping into few days from now.how long can we keep up with wickedness in high places.i mean what kind of demonic spirit of greed and insensitivity possesses this beasts in high places.even deziani is really pissing me off

This is what we get when we have a President who lacks the courage to make a difference and his cabinet peopled with men and women who wears corruption like an ornament and flaunts loot like a medal together with political elites who are uniformly corrupt and heedless under the Umbrella of a Political Party whose main aim is to "SHARE THE MONEY".

take dat: This is what we get when [size=28pt]we have a President who lacks the courage to make a difference[/size] and his cabinet peopled with men and women who wears corruption like an ornament and flaunt loot like a medal together with political elites who are uniformly corrupt and heedless under the umbrella of a political party whose main aim is to "Share the Money".

that is the point !!!!

alj harem:

that is the point !!!!

very very ON POINT!

berem: very very ON POINT!

my wife, I am glad you now see my point when I did not want GEJ but Buhari.

It is very very annoying Anenih is 80 + When would likes of you become the leader in the country ?

Alison- Madueke a known investigated looter is still sitting in power as minister of petroleum resources without accountability on how NNPC and indeed Nigeria cannot account of millions of barrels of oil being taken off the shores of Nigeria. They cannot even tell NIGERIANS THE Materials needed to own an oil field if not "connected". I just hope you are seeing what Alj harem saw last year.

well too much grammar

alj harem:

my wife, I am glad you now see my point when I did not want GEJ but Buhari.

It is very very annoying Anenih is 80 + When would likes of you become the leader in the country ?

Alison- Madueke a known investigated looter is still sitting in power as minister of petroleum resources without accountability on how NNPC and indeed Nigeria cannot account of millions of barrels of oil being taken off the shores of Nigeria. They cannot even tell NIGERIANS THE Materials needed to own an oil field if not "connected". I just hope you are seeing what Alj harem saw last year.

my dear I am also seeing what you are seeing! This country Is really doomed.the corrupt is celebrated and absolutely nothing is done to fight corruption.2015 is fast approaching.I hope Nigerians will be wiser this time and vote for the right person to take this country to the Promise land.

berem: my dear I am also seeing what you are seeing! This country Is really doomed.the corrupt is celebrated and absolutely nothing is done to fight corruption.2015 is fast approaching.I hope Nigerians will be wiser this time and vote for the right person to take this country to the Promise land.

I hope so too, fine girl I really hope so

I hate to say "told you so" but I remember how me, Oyb, Blacksta and others shouted ourselves hoarse here telling people that what we see now will be the main outcome of electing GEJ as President. I.e hideous corruption everywhere. When GEJ was endorsed unanimously by the most corrupt and ruinous hands in Nigeria, plus AGIPs who have made a fortune sabotaging Nigeria from one government to another, what did reasonable people expect? When Otedola et al were following GEJ around like Vultures, what sort of Presidency did Nigeria expect?

GEJ's support base before the elections was grotesquely crooked. A unison of corruption. Balanced folks who don't fool themselves knew that the omen was bad as regards how all the biggest crooks and thieves in Nigeria were united for 'project GEJ' while Mr.President could not even get respected and upright Nigerians (like Achebe, Soyinka, Balarabe Musa et al) to endorse his ambition. It was obvious the crooks endorsed GEJ robustly because "game recognize game". Well, Nigerians have voted. Let us hope some have learned their lesson and will look beyond sentiments and sectional bias in future.

Nigerians, we need to stop venting on FB, nairaland and twitter. Let's take to the street. Let's go on rampage! Let's go to Aso rock and demand we select our own ministers. We can demand GEJ to resign. We can demand Okonjo Iweala gone. We can demand prosecution of IBB, OBJ, Anenih, Sanusi etc.. All of them! We can demand all oil companies polluting the ND to pay billions of dollars for rehabilitation of our oil producing communities.

We can stay on the street until things change! We can shut down Nigeria for as long as it takes!

We can move Nigeria forward! Shut down oil production until oil companies are ready to pay billions in damages and we can withdraw shell's license untill they own up to killing our beloveth Ken Sarowiwa through Abacha!

We can change Nigeria in 1 year! And that year is 2013!!! Drop your work, stop going to work, come on the streets. Drop your job!! It won't get any better!! Students can't be fired so and if lecturers don't have anyone to teach, they'll join us on the street!!

We can make it happen!

Nothing will change unless we do this! Egypt is forcing change and they have been on the street for a year! They want what they want! Nigerians are not animals to be treated anyhow! Bleep we have more soul and more natural than any other nation known to mankind!

Our humanity is contanstly being degraded by politicians, multinationals, IMF, UN, Europe, Israel, America, Saudi Arabia and now China!

Military won't shoot you; they are already planning a coup if you don't know!! If we don't take over the revolution and wait for military to do it, it will be bad for the nation!!

We must shut down Nigeria for it to work!!!