Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives has said that the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Road contract was allegedly overpriced and and awarded to Julius Berger Nigeria at the cost of N155 billion with a completion period or 36 weeks.
The House Committee on Works, which stated during an oversight visit to the road, at the weekend, stated that at the time contract was awarded to Julius Berger, there were other companies that quoted about N90 billion for the 375 kilometer road.
The Chairman of the committee, Abubakar Kabir Abubakar, told journalists that though the construction company has collected about N70 billion from the Federal Government, an assessment of the work done so far revealed that borv more than 20 percent of the work has been done.
Abubakar, while reacting to the presentation by officials of the Ministry of Work, stated that” the unit cost per kilometer for this project is about N450 million. We are not dumb. The cost is too high. Julius Berger says they signed for rehabilitation and now they are are doing reconstruction. But even at that, the cost is far above the cost of a virgin road anywhere in the world.
‘We have to protect the interest of Nigerians because this is our country. We dont have any other country to call our own. We don’t want anybody to send a memo to the President later regarding to funding for this project.
‘What we are saying is that the cost for this project is too high. We know of some companies that quoted N90 billion for this project, but we don’t want to mention names. We have several petitions regarding this project in the House. The cost was initially N159 billion before it was scaled down to N155 billion.’
He added: ‘There is nine months left on the contract and we must emphasise that it must be delivered on schedule. There will be no extension. Otherwise, we wi apply the force of the constitution. We have a similar experience on the Lagos-Ibadan road and that project is almost 15 years now and it has not been completed. We don’t want that to repeat itself on this road.
‘Julius Berger has confirmed to us that they don’t have funding problem. But the Julius Berger we knew in the past is not the same Julius Berger we have now. Their performance is far below expectations.’
The lawmaker directed the Ministry of Works to ensure that emergency measures are put in place to address issues of pot holes causing accidents along the road.