The House of Representatives Committee on Maritime Safety, Education and Administration, says it will probe contractors who abandoned projects at the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron, Akwa Ibom.

The chairman, Khadijah Ibrahim, stated this in Oron on Thursday when the committee visited the academy as part of its oversight functions.

Ms Ibrahim said that the committee would investigate all cases of project abandonment from the inception of the institution.

Represented by the committee’s cuce chairman, Uduak 

Ududoh (PDP-Akwa Ibom), Ms Ibrahim said that the committee would soon officially communicate its intention to the institution.

“We will meet as a committee and mandate the Clerk to write the institution because we cannot continue this way.

”Tax payers money should be used to provide services for the people. No contractor should abandon projects after being paid.

”The practice of abandoning projects after receiving money 

must not be allowed to continue,” he said.

The chairman urged the management of the institution to expose members of staff involved in leakages that had set it backwards.

”Some of them may still be part of the establishment, they must be exposed for the system to move towards,” she said.

Ms Ibrahim expressed worries that the statutory five per cent allocation from NIMASA had not been paid in the past one year.

”We shall summon them, every stakeholder should be seen doing their part to make the institution to grow,” he said.

Earlier, the Rector, Commodore Duja Effedua (rtd), said that the academy was in a serious state decay when he assumed office.

Mr Effedua said that the state of the institution was so bad that the International Maritime Organisation threatened to delist it.

”This was because those vested with the responsibility of running the affairs of the institution were chasing mundane things,” he said. 

(NAN)