The Chairman of the Bauchi State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Alhaji Abubakar Bauchi, has warned engineers against using substandard materials in the execution of projects in the state.
Bauchi gave the warning while speaking with journalists after the board had a business session with the State House of Assembly on Tuesday in Bauchi.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the State House of Assembly had summoned the SUBEB’s Chairman to explain why there were alleged substandard projects and the shoddy execution of some contracts awarded by the board in the state.
He said that the board appeared before the legislators to explain what led to the the substandard projects executed in some schools in the state.
Bauchi said that the house also directed that the board should not pay the contractors of such projects until they had corrected all the defects associated with the contracts they executed.
The Chairman said that the board admitted that there were irregularities in some of the projects executed in some schools across the state.
“We discovered that those projects were not properly supervised by our engineers who have the responsibility over the projects.
“That is to say that they have not done their job diligently as expected of them.
“Therefore, we are calling on the engineers to leave up to expectation or face the consequences,” he said.
He urged the engineers to go back to the project sites for monitoring and proper supervision.
“The board will not hesitate to punish any engineer found wanting or jeopardizing the schools’ projects in the state,” he said.
Bauchi assured the law makers that all irregularities would be corrected in line with the expectations of the legislators, the government and the people of the state.
The Chairman of the house committee on Education, Alhaj Mohammed Babayo, recommended that all companies and contractors that executed substandard projects to the detriment of the people of the State should be blacklisted.
Babayo called on the board to carry out an investigation on the alleged negligence by the engineers and that whoever that is found wanting should be punished to serve as a deterrent to others.
He promised that the house committee would be monitoring and evaluating through constant oversight functions to end the irregularities in projects’ execution in the state..(NAN)
