Road Constructions And Legislative Oversight

Members of the
House of Representatives’ Committee on Works were in Abia State recently to inspect ongoing road projects, as part of their oversight functions.
They were also in the state to verify claims made by the Abia State Government for reimbursement on expenses incurred in reconstructing federal roads.
The state government claimed that it has spent N14.6 billion on the maintenance of 16 federal roads.
The roads which the lawmakers inspected include Umuahia-Bende-Ohafia road; Ikot Ekpene-Aba-Owerri road; Ikot Ekpene-Aba road; Olokoro-Ahiaukwu-Itaja-Obuohia road; Olokoro Isiala-Oboro-Nnono road and Olokoro-Ariam-Ikwuano road.
Others are Ahiaukwu-Amangwo-Umuahia-Ngwa road; Nkporo-Abiriba-Ohafia road and Abiriba-Arochukwu-Ohafia road.
The lawmakers used modern road testing equipment to ascertain the quality of the roads and confirm if the contractors actually executed the projects according to specifications.
Briefing newsmen after the inspection, Rep. Ogbuefi Ozomgbachi, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Works, lamented that the committee discovered that over 85 per cent of roads in the South-East geopolitical zone fell below standard.
He blamed incessant road failures in the area on several factors, which included award of contracts to incompetent contractors and poor supervision by the works ministry.
Ozomgbachi commended the Abia Government for its intervention in rehabilitating federal roads in the state, adding that N20 billion had been earmarked in the 2013 budget as refunds to state governments that executed federal road projects.
He, however, noted that more than 60 per cent of the 300,000 kilometres of federal roads across the country were in a deplorable state.
Ozomgbachi said that the committee’s resolve to use modern road testing equipment during the roads’ inspection was designed to get to the root of the problem.
“Due to our intention to get to the root of the problem, we acquired equipment like coring machine, smith hammer, tape and concrete testing equipment, among others, to ensure that contractors executed the projects according to specifications.
“With the use of these equipment, we have been able to uncover why our roads continue to collapse, while the government keeps expending huge amount of money on roads every year with little or no result,” he said.
Another member of the committee, Rep. Tobias Okwuru, said that the committee decided to use the road testing equipment to ensure that the government got value for the money spent on road projects.
Mr. Godwin Eghieye, the Director of Federal Ministry of Works, who is in charge of highways in the South-East zone, conceded that some contractors failed to execute their contracts according to specifications.
He also said that the contract for the reconstruction of the section 3 of the Ikot Ekpene-Aba road, awarded at the cost of N2.991 billion in December 2009, had yet to be completed, even though it had August 2011 as its completion date.
“Other details of the road projects are known to the contractors and the government expects that contractors handling the projects to execute them according to specifications”, he said.
Besides, Eghieye said that “work appeared to be moving at snail speed in a number of road projects toured by the lawmakers in Enugu, Ebonyi, Imo, Anambra and Abia states.”
However, Mr. Nasiru Bello, the Federal Controller of Works in Abia, said that the pragmatic approach adopted by the federal lawmakers would boost the delivery of road projects.
He, nonetheless, gave an assurance that road projects would be effectively supervised, especially with the deployment of additional personnel to the state.
Governor Theodore Orji of Abia blamed the bad condition of roads in the South-East zone on the devastating effects of the 1967-1970 Civil War.
He stressed that state governments in the zone lacked the wherewithal to reconstruct the roads, soliciting the Federal Government’s intervention in that regard.
Orji said that his administration has spent N14.6 billion on the maintenance of 16 federal roads in the state.
He expressed the hope that the lawmakers’ visit would facilitate the refund of the money spent on the projects by the Federal Government.
The governor, however, said that the road reconstruction contracts awarded by the Federal Government in Abia had been abandoned because the contractors were not duly mobilised.
He listed some of the abandoned projects as the Arochukwu-Ohafia road  as well as the Olokoro-Ahiaukwu road. Orji also noted that allocations were not made for the road projects in the 2013 budget, adding that the situation would negatively affect the achievements already recorded by the government in efforts to improve the infrastructure. He called for the lawmakers’ intervention in efforts to ensure that existing road projects,  that were not captured in the 2013 budget, were captured in the supplementary budget.
All the same, Mr. Eddy Anyanwu, a contractor, stressed that the execution of road projects according to contract specifications would pose no  problem, as long as the government fulfilled its contractual obligations to the contractors.
“We submit monthly returns to government on what should be done to address the perceptible challenges facing contractors handling federal road projects; if all those things are done, I think we will make appreciable progress,” he said.
Even though most of the reasons behind the poor execution of road projects by contractors are quite obvious; stakeholders insist that tangible efforts should be made to compel contractors to execute projects according to specifications.
Onyeukwu is of NAN

Francis Onyeukwu