The Federal government has terminated the 43-kilometre Port Harcourt–Aba Road contract being handled by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) over poor performance.
The Minister of Works, David Umahi, said the decision followed the contractor’s persistent failure to improve its work despite repeated warnings, which has led to the collapse of sections of the project despite huge funds already expended.
Umahi disclosed this to newsmen shortly after inspecting the project on Sunday, adding that the Federal Government will now engage a competent indigenous contractor to take over and complete the job.
He said: “Today (Sunday) is 19th of October. The Controller reported to me that the Aba-bound of Port Harcourt–Aba Road being constructed by CCECC is at the verge of total collapse.
“This job, 43 kilometres from Port Harcourt to Aba, is an inherited project, and since we came on board, we have been doing everything, putting funds to see how we can finish one carriageway.
“And so we started working with CCECC on this one carriageway using concrete to do the inner shoulder and the outer shoulder so as to ensure the road lasts, while they are using asphalt to do the 7.3 carriageway.
“And their method of construction has been a very serious source of concern, where you will do binder for over a stretch of 30 kilometres and you are not putting wearing. We have issued warnings to CCECC more than 20 times, and we have told them the implications of putting binder without doing shoulder and without wearing.”
Continuing, the minister said: “And I want the press to capture the failure of a road that the Federal government has used taxpayers’ money to pay for. And CCECC has consistently refused to obey all the instructions. I have been here more than seven times. If you get to Port Harcourt end, which they did about two years or thereabouts, the entire road has almost totally failed.”
He said several letters written to the contractor to maintain the road had gone unheeded.
“So I have to take responsibility and make a decision. Number one, the Port Harcourt-bound is discoped; no longer going to be done by CCECC.
“I will direct the Ministry of Works to scout for very qualified indigenous contractors to handle the Port Harcourt-bound. They should be the contractor that should start work immediately, and then we should source funds for them.”
Umahi said that despite the termination, CCECC must mill out the binder already laid because it had been paid for, warning that he would shut down all their projects in Nigeria if they failed to comply.
“The site handled by CCECC should issue them 14-day notice of termination of this job and I want this directive to go very wide. After 14 days, if they fail to mill out the binder and replace it properly, they have to initiate it, they have to commit to doing that even if they are going to do it during the dry season. They have to maintain the ones they have done and they must put in writing that they are going to mill out the binder at their own cost and then be able to put a new binder which we have paid for.
“If they don’t do that I will shut down all their projects in Nigeria. I will do that. So the notice of termination must be issued before Wednesday, and I will publish it so that the efforts that the President is putting in, nobody is going to sabotage it.”
Expressing displeasure, Umahi said it was regrettable that contractors handling several federal projects could still deliver poor work.
He added: “Our conscience is very clear and we will publish all the warnings we gave to CCECC on this project so that the whole country will see it, because when we are being de-marketed, there is nothing anybody will say about the contractor.
“When we manage to pay, and then they could not do the right construction, then they have to pay for it. If from tomorrow they don’t get to start amending this, I will come back and arrest the Chinese people who are on this project because they have taken the money and they have to maintain these places.
“I was here three weeks ago. I begged them to maintain this mess; they did, and they didn’t do anything about it. Now it is developing, and very soon vehicles will start falling, and then people will start dying, and nobody will call them. So if they don’t do it I will get them arrested.”
