The senator representing Cross River Northern Senatorial District in the National Assembly, Senator Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe has distanced himself from allegations of self-dealing or conflict of interest in relation to contracts awarded to companies that handled projects in his senatorial district.
Jarigbe said in an interview with TNN over the telephone on Monday, that he was neither a director in the said company, nor did he have any dealing with the companies that got contracts from various federal government agencies.
Saying that his relations may have been connected with the company in question, Jarigbe said it was unthinkable for anyone to lose sleep if members of his family with the requisite qualifications to bid for and secure jobs were doing their things legally.
He asked: “When did it become a crime for people that are close to me, whether by blood or otherwise, to pursue their businesses to enable them eke out decent living? Or, are they not supposed to look for their daily bread because they share same surname with me or because they come from the same place that I come from?
“Is there any law stopping them from fending for themselves simply because they are related to me? I think some people are just unnecessarily being mischievous and determined to drag my hard earned name for reasons best known to them.
“Whoever says I am self-dealing or there is conflict of interest in the award of federal government contracts must either be an illiterate or a mischief maker. Please go through the so-called contract documents or the CAC documents of the company, check very well if you will see my name or anything close to it.”
He said anybody in his family, village, federal constituency or senatorial district who felt qualified to bid for government contracts was free to do so, citing sections 16(1) and 54(1)(b) of the Nigerian Public Procurement Act (2007) as basis for his stance.
According to him, family members of public officials were not barred from bidding for government jobs if they met eligibility criteria (Section 16(1)) but that public officers were only barred from having private interests in procurement contracts, for the sake of transparency (Section 54(1)(b)).
He insisted that he was never involved in any of the processes leading to or after the contract had been awarded and urged those spreading the damaging speculation against him to be cautious of malicious reports to avoid litigation.
