Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has disclosed that the late Rector of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron, Akwa Ibom State, Joshua Okpo died one week after he (Amaechi) stopped him from awarding contracts at the institution.
SHIPS & PORTS reported on November 30,2015 that Amaechi had ordered the immediate audit of the accounts of the Academy over alleged misappropriation of more than N18billion between 2009 and 2014. Okpo died on December 8 at his residence in Abuja.
The Transportation Minister, Amaechi, while speaking in Lagos recently on the final day of a stakeholders conference by the Federal Ministry of Transportation said he discovered that the late Rector had an approval limit of N250million for capital projects.
“What we realised was that anything above the approval limit would require him to seek the Minister’s approval but rather than do that, we discovered that he was awarding several contracts of not more than N250million each rather than making recourse to the Ministry,” the Minister said.
“So what I did was to tell him that going forward, I must approve even the N250million contracts before he could award them,” he added.
Amaechi said one week after giving this instruction, he learnt that Okpo had died.
The Minister lamented that corruption had become the bane of Nigeria’s economic advancement.
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