President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday asked ministers not to bring augmentation that is beyond 15 per cent of the original cost of projects to the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
The President also frowned at a situation where augmentation or variations of contracts end up being higher than the original contracts awarded.
Addressing State House Correspondents after the weekly FEC meeting yesterday, Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, said the President believed that if Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) do their jobs through proper planning and cost evaluation before awarding contracts, the incidence of half valuation of contracts would be avoided.
Maku said: "The President gave a directive that henceforth any MDA that has any variation on a contract that goes beyond 15 per cent should not be presented to Council unless that variation has the President's personal approval."
According to him, Jonathan also asked the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) not to entertain any application for valuation of contracts that exceeded 15 per cent of the original cost.
The minister said: "The President also insisted that ministers and agencies of government must ensure that in giving awards of contract, we verify the actual workload that is expected to ensure proper valuation of our projects so that we will not continue with his pattern of variation of contracts that sometimes go high as 100 per cent of the original contract awarded."
National Mirror