Lokoja-Benin Road: Sign Reviewed Contracts Or We Will Terminate Your Job

The Minister of Works, Engr David Umahi, has threatened to terminate over 870 billion Naira contracts with five firms handling the Lokoja-Benin Road.

Umahi ordered the contractors handling sections I-IV of the Lokoja-Benin Road in Kogi and Edo states, to immediately sign the documents on the reviewed contracts or face the termination of their jobs.

The directive was handed down to the contractors during the minister’s meeting with the representatives of Mothercat, CCECC, Dantata & Sawoe, CGC and RCC, held at the ministry’s headquarters in Abuja.

The minister also gave the ministry a seven days ultimatum to carry out a comprehensive audit of ongoing projects, to know the status of work done, and the capacity of personnel and equipment being used by the contractors.

This was contained in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Uchenna Orji, on Sunday.

He accused the construction firms of playing pranks, wondering why the contractors who were part of the process of re-scoping and reviewing the contract specifications failed to sign the reviewed contract documents after agreeing to do the job based on the new specification.

He said, “When I came in as minister, I saw that the project was over-bloated, and I refused to take the ‘No Objection’ to the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

“I had to go through the road myself, and I realised that some sections of the road could not survive asphalt. So, we started meetings that took us over five months with all the contractors. In the meetings, we agreed to re-scope the project.

“We said the new lanes should be done on concrete and the other ones done on asphalt. So, we kept the contracts up and we all signed the documents and based on signing the documents, we took it to the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP).

“From the BPP, we went to FEC, and before we went to FEC, we demanded for them to approve that they could do the job. They all gave us letters of approval.”

The minister said that the contractors were given the jobs without having the required manpower and equipment to do the task, and warned that henceforth, any contractor signing a contract must do so alongside the basic rate and timeline.

“So the position of the government is that if you are not signing the contracts between today and tomorrow, you will forgo the jobs. You can go to court. We will not enter into any condition for further negotiation”, he added.