By Abdul Jelil Adebayo
When the FCT Area Council Service Commission was established, it was saddled with the responsibility of overseeing of the six Area Councils in the territory. These are the Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, Kwali, Bwari, Abaji, Kuje and Gwagwalada Area Councils, which are equivalent to local governments in the states.
The commission is also in charge of recruitment, promotion and discipline of staff in the six area councils, hence the importance of whoever is at the helm of affairs at the commission to be proactive and a goal getter.
But recent happenings in the commission need the attention of the Minister of State, FCT, Dr. Maryam Mahmoud who is supervising the commission among other agencies in FCT.
One will not be wrong to say there is underhand handling of trainings, which is one of the major roles of the Commission.
Those who apply to train the staff are commonly referred to as consultants.
As at the last count, there are about 150 consultants, who were engaged by the commission to train the staff of the six area councils that have not been paid for the training they conducted.
The commission is owing them over N600 million as unpaid monies for the services they have so far rendered.
Some of these consultants, it was gathered did the training since 2019 and are yet to be paid. It was gathered also that some of them have died and others hospitalised as they were said to have used their last savings from retirement to train the area council personnel.
Surprisingly, the contract sum for each of such a training must not exceed N2.4million, and most of these consultants are retired civil servants.
There are some of them who have been given letters to train the staff more than five instances without been paid a dime.
Angered by the non payment, some of the consultants decided to form a group they termed “Association of Consultants to the FCT Area Council Commission”
In their letter of protest to the immediate past Minister of State, Ramatu Tijani Aliyu, the members pleaded that the Administration should pray the commission to offset their bills.
Their letter was referred to the FCT Audit department for verification. And that was when trouble started as those who were not prevee to the letter rushed to the commission for inclusion, but were told it was already late and were advised to go and meet the conveners of the association or the audit department.
Their letter was referred to the FCT Audit Department, which unfortunately did a poor Audit assignment.
Only the consultants that petitioned were verified instead of liaising with the account department of the commission.
It was a closed verification,and many of the Consultants who were not in the picture of the petition were left out from the audit and were never invited.
The Commission also, did not circulate information to all those who did jobs for the Audit exercise.
At the end, some of the Consultants were not listed for payment.
Meanwhile, the original list of Liabilities is with the Account Dept of the Commission, which has been paying until it was stopped by the last administration.
Those left out from the list submitted by the ‘association’ are crying foul that good enough, the Letter of Engagement was not awarded to any Association, but individual Companies.
Meanwhile, those who followed the advice of the Administrative Secretary that the lapses would be resolved said they saw no reason to be confrontational as they believe it would be all encompassing.
But when the payment started, it was the association list that was being used.
It was gathered that the excluded Consultants are also posing for Litigation over their unjust exclusion from the payment.
Kenechukwu Aguolu FCA,PMP, CBAP is a Public Affairs Analyst.
