Senator Binta Masi Garba, representing Adamawa North District, has asked the Federal Government to revoke the N20 billion contract awarded for the repair of a bridge destroyed by Boko Haram in 2014.
Senator Binta Masi Garba, representing Adamawa North District, has asked the Federal Government to revoke the N20 billion contract awarded for the repair of a bridge destroyed by Boko Haram in 2014.
The bridge provides access to Borno State from the eastern axis of Adamawa State.
Senator Binta reacted to calls from her constituents, who noted that the Lebanese contractor was incompetent.
The Senator's constituents, who lamented the slow pace of rehabilitation work on the 90km road linking Adamawa and Borno states, threatened to chase the contractors away.
The project was awarded to RHAS Nigeria Limited at the cost of N20 billion.
On Sunday, youths protested the shoddy nature of the rehabilitation work, and accosted officials of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, who were in the area to assess the pace of the project, following the complaints by Garba, on behalf of her constituency.
Leading the officials from the FMPW&H, including the Director of Highways and the Comptroller of Works in charge of the North-East, she also expressed dissatisfaction with the work done on the site, and urged them to utilise the report of the findings.
She added that based on the importance of the scope of the contract, which includes the repair of Kudzum, Dilichim and Shuwa bridges linking Adamawa and Borno states, to the restoration of economic activities, the government should revoke the contract awarded RHAS Nigeria limited because of its “incompetence".
She said: "We have called for the revocation of the contract before now, and that is why the representatives of the minister are here to get first-hand information about the veracity of our claims.
"This is my happiest moment, because they have come and seen for themselves that we are not just raising a false claim about the company's lack of competence and capacity to execute the contract. We request them to come to our rescue by revoking the contract.
Mallam Kabir Bashir, a community leader, who met with the delegation at the dilapidated section of Kudzum bridge, urged the delegation to take their call for the revocation of the contract to the minister.
He said: “There’s nothing we want from the Federal Government more than to do the needful by revoking the contract and re-awarding it to another contractor that is more competent.”
He said besides the slow pace of the work, the drainages constructed by the construction company only worsened floods in the area.
However, Gertz Zheradin, a Lebanese engineer handling the contract, dismissed claims made by the Senator and members of her constituency, stating that RHAS Nigeria Limited has 20 years of construction experience in Nigeria’s South-East.
According to him, the project is a huge contract with a completion time of 18 months, of which eight months had already been spent. He said only 10 per cent has been achieved, because of delays in mobilisation and the rains affecting the progress of work.