Senate summons contractors over Abuja-Lokoja Road after death of Prof Iyayi

 

The Senate Ad hoc Committee on Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Scheme on Tuesday summoned the contractors handling the Abuja-Abaji-Lokoja Road dualisation project.

The project was awarded in 2006 at the cost of about N42bn to four contractors but was later reviewed to N116bn.

The affected construction firms are: Dantata and Sawoe, Bulletin Construction, Reynolds Construction Company and Gitto.

The committee also queried the Managing Director of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency, Mr. Gabriel Amuchi, over the allocation of N1.3bn as operational and labour cost out of the N4bn it got from the SURE-P programme for road maintenance and rehabilitation.

The committee lamented what it called the “scandalous review of the contract sum with over 170 per cent from 2006 to date.”

The senators noted that based on their calculations, N300m had been spent on a kilometre since the entire stretch of the road covered about 400 kilometres.

Chairman of the ad hoc committee, Senator Abdul Ningi, lamented that facts before the panel suggested that FERMA had “turned the SURE-P money into Father Christmas by spending N1bn on labour cost in the name of paying 6,000 youths it was said to have engaged as direct labourers.”

Amuchi had informed the panel that the agency paid each of the youths N18,000 per month, but Ningi said it was not necessary since the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity had already engaged the youths under the same SURE-P arrangement.

The senator also directed the FERMA boss to submit details of all the beneficiaries of the programme to the committee within one week.

The senators queried the alleged duplication of projects and contracts by FERMA in the 2012 and 2013 budgets based on the submission made to them.

However, FERMA said it purchased construction equipment with the money but the lawmakers said having procured such in 2012, there was no need for the agency to repeat the same in its 2013 budget.