By Secrets Reporters
On 30 December 2023, the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation paid Hydroworks Limited the sum of N37,076,463.28. The payment carried no work with it. Official payment records examined by SecretsReporters describe it in full as part payment of interest on delayed payment on Interim Valuation Certificate No. 8, for the development of the Lower Anambra Irrigation Project in Anambra State.
The same certificate drew the same kind of payment again on 4 September 2024, when the ministry paid Hydroworks Limited N71,593,355.48, described as part payment of interest on delayed payment on the same Certificate No. 8 for the Lower Anambra Irrigation Project. On 23 August 2025, the ministry paid a third sum of N29,902,683.02, described as the third part payment of accrued interest on delayed payment of the same certificate. Across 2023, 2024 and 2025, the three payments total N138,572,501.78, and every naira of it is interest that accrued on one certificate because the ministry did not pay that certificate on time.
The records describe every one of the three sums as a part payment, and the August 2025 payment expressly as the third part payment of accrued interest, so the penalty that the ministry’s own delay created was itself discharged in pieces across twenty months, from December 2023 to August 2025.
The works on the Lower Anambra Irrigation Project and the certificate itself predate Professor Joseph Terlumun Utsev, who assumed office as Minister of Water Resources and Sanitation on 21 August 2023. The interest did not predate him. Each of the three interest payments was made in his tenure, in December 2023, in September 2024 and in August 2025, and each one was public money handed over in exchange for no canal, no drain and no structure of any kind, in breach of the duty of prudent management of public resources that the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 places on every ministry spending public funds.
The company that received the interest carries its own record at the Corporate Affairs Commission. Hydroworks Limited, RC 35017, was registered on 8 September 1980. On the CAC portal, its status stands as inactive, the status the Commission posts against a company that has failed to file the annual returns the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020 requires of it, and against the name the portal carries its own instruction to the company to visit the Commission and update its status. While carrying that inactive status, the company collected the interest from the ministry across 2023, 2024 and 2025, on a payment run that the procurement framework reserves for contractors whose corporate compliance is in order.
The second record sits on a dam in Katsina State. A final certificate is the document that closes a construction contract, certifying the last sum due on the works and settling the account between the government and the contractor. On 14 February 2025, the ministry paid out N1,371,007,595.91 on the final certificate for the construction of the Ingawa Dallaje Dam, in three payments made the same day and recorded as the first, second and third part payments on that one certificate: N71,198,335.78, N1,287,475,153.49 and N12,334,106.64. The payee named in the records for all three payments is King of Africa General Trading, in joint venture with Hassuni Engineering Services Ltd, and the money was paid into the name of King of Africa General Trading alone.
King of Africa General Trading is not a limited liability company. On the CAC portal, the name is registered as a business name, RC 7335033, with a registration date of 6 February 2024, one year and eight days before the final certificate was paid. A business name under the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020 is a registered trading style; it is not a company, it has no separate legal personality of its own, it keeps no board and it files no audited annual accounts for any creditor or ministry to inspect. The Public Procurement Act 2007 builds the eligibility of contractors for federal work on that corporate framework, setting conditions a bidder must meet on registration, tax and compliance before public money is committed to it. The final certificate on a federal dam was nevertheless closed into that business name in February 2025.
The Ingawa Dallaje Dam contract itself predates Utsev, who was not the minister when the dam was awarded. The closure of its account did not. The three payments that settled the final certificate were made inside his tenure, and it was under his watch that the business name took the final money on a federal dam. For the joint venture partner named beside it in the payment records, Hassuni Engineering Services Ltd, no registration record was located on the CAC portal under the name the records carry.
