By Kebba AF Touray
The former Chief Executive Officer of the Banjul City Council, Mustapha Batchilly, appeared before the National Assembly’s Finance and Public Accounts Committee (FPAC) on Monday to respond to governance and expenditure concerns raised in a special audit of the controversial Banjul-Ostend Partnership Project.
The FPAC’s inquiry follows a prior session with the current BCC leadership, during which lawmakers were presented with the findings of the audit, which scrutinized the management and financial handling of the European Union-funded project.
At the center of the inquiry is the composition and conduct of the project’s Steering Committee, which the audit found to be inconsistent with the Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) and the Sustainable Public Procurement and Expenditure Policy. Specifically, auditors noted that the committee was not constituted with the appropriate personnel mandated by the agreement.
Batchilly, who served as CEO during the implementation of the project, conceded that the oversight may have stemmed from inexperience.
“They were co-opted on a need basis. It might be an oversight, due to inexperience, as it was our first time handling a project of that magnitude,” he told the committee. “It was not supposed to have been done.”
In addition to the governance lapses, lawmakers pressed Batchilly on the disbursement of D3.1 million in allowances to members of the project’s Steering Committee. According to the audit, the total amount paid out in allowances was D3,187,525 — a sum questioned for both its legitimacy and its basis in policy.
Batchilly argued that because the FPA allowed for the creation of a Steering Committee, with its members allocated compensation.
“Even if small, the project allowed for a steering body, and the allowances came with that,” he explained.
He added that once payments began, the committee deemed it appropriate to implement increments and subsequently developed what he described as a policy document to justify the increases.
“We created and adopted a policy, which we shared with our collaborators,” Batchilly said. “That was the position on which the increments were made. We now have these documents, and I promise to share them with the committee.”
However, his claims were soon tested by members of FPAC. Hon. Kebba Lang Fofana directly challenged the existence of any formal policy authorizing the increments. Batchilly initially affirmed that such a policy existed, only to reverse his position moments later, conceding, “No,” in reference to the absence of an explicit policy sanctioned by the FPA or procurement guidelines.
The exchange raised further questions about the transparency of the project’s financial administration and highlighted inconsistencies between BCC’s internal practices and the project’s contractual obligations with international partners.
The Ostend Project, named after the Belgian city twinned with Banjul, has drawn attention for both its ambitious urban development aims and its troubled implementation. Funded in part under the European Union’s CityLink program, the project was intended to promote sustainable city management, but now finds itself under scrutiny over poor financial governance and opaque decision-making.
FPAC is expected to continue its hearings in the coming days. Foroyaa will follow the developments in subsequent editions.
