Will ACB probe itself too on oil deals?
So, the Government Contracting Unit up in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC)—which vets contracts in the public service—had no problems with the fuel contracts that National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) entered into with successful suppliers. The unit found the contracts sound and cleared the national oil firm.
I want to believe the Solicitor General at the Ministry of Justice had reviewed the paper work as well and was satisfied.
The Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority (PPDA)—which regulates public procurement in Malawi—had no issue with the process that led to the award of the tenders to the companies and issued a ‘No Objection’, which basically cleared Nocma to proceed with the finalisation of the contract awards.
Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (Mera) appears to have been the only institution in the procurement authorisation chain to have objected to the process, arguing that the winning bids were too expensive compared to other bidders who were much lower.
The country, according to Mera, would have saved Malawi at least K40 billion annually had Nocma picked the cheaper ones. Of course, without access to the full tender evaluation report, it is hard to really discuss with competence whether Mera has a point or not given that price is not the only determining factor when evaluating and deciding on which bid is the best. So, I will leave that for now.
An outcry erupted from social media opinion leaders and established lobby groups such as the Human Rights Defenders Coalition, who urged the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to investigate the contract awards, fearing foul play.
This was some months ago and the bureau has never indicated whether they had launched a probe and what the findings were.
The debate had been raging for months and without substantive leadership at the bureau, there may have been uncertainty on how to proceed. It is also not clear yet whether the ACB cleared Nocma as is the law with such high value contracts before the State oil firm announced the successful winners.
But I do not see how Nocma would have gathered the courage to proceed with the contract award without an explicit clearance letter from the Bureau.
Yet, within seven working days at the Bureau, new director general Martha Chizuma issued an order on Wednesday this week freezing the contracts.
I guess the reason is to first investigate whether there was corruption or abuse of office in the procurement process as some people seem to suggest.
But Chizuma has her work cut out for her and this investigation could become awkward for officials at the ACB.
She has to examine the decision-making process at Nocma—including who was involved in those choices and why they made the judgement calls they made on the contracts.
She has to conduct the same probes at Government Contracting Unit, Ministry of Justice, PPDA and even Mera itself.
Most importantly—and this is the tricky part—she will have to preside over an ACB that should as well investigate itself on the role it played in clearing the Nocma fuel procurement process.
This will especially be the case if indeed the bureau already cleared these controversial fuel contracts as I suspect only to freeze now after some pressure from certain sections of society.
The questions are: Will the ACB be investigating itself on who cleared the contracts, the basis of the decisions to issue a green light and who made the decisions?
And whether the decisions the ACB made were due to the influence of a golden handshake or not? How will the ACB ensure that the investigation of itself is objective and without bias?
Remember that it is not long time ago when Attorney General Chokosa Silungwe wrote in a memo to the ACB director general that he believes that several agencies, including those that vet contracts such as PPDA and ACB itself were compromised in a certain procurement controversy.
So, exactly, will oversee ACB’s investigation of its own role in the fuel saga?
