Ebonyi Governor Francis Nwifuru Gave All Four General Hospital Contracts Worth N9.51 Billion to Nkwegu Medicals, a Company Registered 17 Days After He Took Office

Four award records on the Ebonyi State procurement portal carry the whole of the state's general hospital equipping programme, and every one of them names the same winner. The records, examined by SecretsReporters, sit under the Ministry of Health in a single tender family, EB/HLT/EP004, and they were published on one evening, 17 October 2023, inside 58 minutes.

The first record, Lot 1, is the procurement of hospital machines for the 14 general hospitals, at N3,299,787,750. The second, Lot 2, is the procurement of heavy duty machines, at N3,831,244,337. The third, Lot 3, is the procurement of hospital equipments, at N1,236,823,298. The fourth, Lot 4, is the procurement of hospital consumables, at N1,141,145,933. Added together, the four lots come to N9,509,001,318, and the name entered against each of them is one company, Nkwegu Medicals.

Machines, heavy duty machines, equipment and consumables are the entire supply side of a general hospital, and Ebonyi has 14 of them. The portal divided that supply into four lots and the state placed all four with a single firm, so that no second company holds any part of the equipping of the state's general hospitals on the public record.

Ebonyi's procurement law rests state contracts on open competitive bidding, and the portal is the instrument by which the outcome of that competition is published. Against each of these four lots, the published record names the same winner and no other company, and it publishes no competing bidder against any of them.

The winner was four months old when the records appeared. Nkwegu Medicals, RC 7017260, was registered on 15 June 2023, and it stands active on the corporate register. Governor Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru took office on 29 May 2023. The company's registration came 17 days after his administration began, and by 17 October 2023 it held all four lots of the general hospitals programme.

The records carry their own rough edges. The portal prints the winner's name as NKWEGU MEICALS LIMITED on all four rows, a misspelling of the company's registered name carried through the entire award series. The award date field on each of the four records is blank; the documents carry release timestamps and nothing more, and the budget labels differ between rows, the first reading Ebonyi State 2023 Budget and the other three reading 2023.

The company itself trades openly. Findings by SecretsReporters show a firm with a public address at No. 38 Water Works Road in Abakaliki, and a specialist hospital trading under its name in the state capital. Its own material names Dr. Jennifer Ogechi Nkwegu as the medical doctor who leads it.

The equipment is also visibly in place. Posts published by the Governor's Special Assistant on New Media display hospital beds and equipment branded NKWEGU MEDICALS installed inside the state's general hospitals, presented to the public as the administration's health sector delivery.

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