By Chidi Nkwopara

OWERRI—Imo State Government has been urged to revisit and publish the findings of the Sir Jude Ejiogu panel on the recovery of public funds allegedly squandered by contractors.

Okorocha

The Ejiogu panel, which included some security personnel, was set up by Governor Rochas Okorocha and charged with the responsibility of going after and recovering public funds paid to non-performing contractors that collected money and absconded.

Most respondents, who spoke to Vanguard yesterday, we’re in agreement that the panel was set up about two years ago and ought to have finished and handed over its report to the Governor, especially now that government is in financial difficulty.

A top civil servant who spoke on strict grounds of anonymity, said he was hinging his appeal on the prevailing economic crunch that gave birth to the inability of government to pay staff salaries.

“Sir Jude Ejiogu is a serious minded public officer. A lot of us heaved a sigh of relief when he was given that assignment but we are no longer comfortable with the apparent inability or unwillingness of the state government to inform citizens how much was recovered from the fleeing contractors”, the civil servant said.

Answering a question, the civil servant recalled   that “apart from J-Pros, who was paid over N1.3 billion, many contractors were equally paid without living up to expectation.”

He recalled that the Governor personally ordered the arrest of some of the contractors, when he toured the local council areas to assess the scope of work done.

A pensioner, who identified himself as Chief Chimereze, urged Governor Okorocha to  recover all the monies he paid to contracting firms that failed to deliver on their mandate.

“There is no doubt that the Governor paid varying sums of money to all manner of contractors. It is also not in doubt that we have a lot of uncompleted and abandoned projects in all the 27 local government areas of the state. We need to be told who is owing the other”, Chimereze said.