Budgetary Allocation Affecting Road Construction, Says Umahi

The Minister of Works, David Umahi, has said that the way Nigeria’s budgetary allocation is designed is not encouraging contractors to complete federal road projects across the country timely.

He also said contractors would not be stopped from making use of asphalt in their construction of roads, but they must sign an indemnity agreement of 30 years duration of the roads with the ministry.

The minister said that construction of concrete roads would not be enforced on projects awarded already, adding that contractors would need to give assurance that roads built with asphalt would last up to 30 years, even though the concrete roads would last longer.

“We are not stopping asphalt works, but it is not possible to be paying the job that we know will not stand for five years. Contractors hide under the funny excuse of overloading for roads not standing long.

“The concrete road when properly done will last for 50 years and we have success where we have done that apart from the one I did in Ebonyi State before I left office we delivered Abakaliki Ridgeway Road which was funded by the African Development Bank.”

Speaking at a press conference in Abuja on Monday, Umahi said the release of the fund to contractors on an annual basis made road projects linger as in most cases the contractor access little funds to purchase the necessary material to carry out their job, adding that the delay further gave rise to contract variation as inflation affected the original amount agreed for the project.

He said: “When you give a contractor N150m a year for a N600m road project, he will pocket it while mobilising to the site without doing anything on the ground. When confronted, he will say he is yet to get the material he requested for outside the country as the money was not enough.”

He, however, appealed to the National Assembly to release over N650 it withheld for some projects across the country which he said were almost complete but for which lack of fund was still keeping the contractors on site.

Speaking further, he went on to encourage Nigerians to cultivate the habit of building cash crops across road corridors to prevent kidnappings.

“Nigerians must get value for their taxes, the road is is everything, where we are having kidnapping is on the spot where roads are bad, we should remove the bushes and plant cash crop, it is ideal and acceptable and we should replicate it in all parts of the country. It will remove the kidnappings.”

While reiterating that construction of concrete roads would not be enforced on projects awarded already, he said contractors would need to give assurance that roads built with asphalt would last up to 30 years even though the concrete roads would last longer.

“We are not stopping asphalt works but it is not possible to be paying the job that we know will not stand for five years. Contractors hide under the funny excuse of overloading for the road not standing long.”

He added that the ministry would review the operations of the Federal Road Management Agency to ensure that any intervention in states would be done with the input of the state government to know the roads with top priority.