Imo state Contractors flee with mobilisation fees

When Chief Rochas Okorocha came on board as Governor of Imo State, he told the world that he was in a haste to develop the state. One of the major issues he tackled almost immediately was the rehabilitation or reconstruction of the road network in the state. He went to work with electrifying speed that most citizens started wondering how he was funding the numerous projects.

Many contractors, who were largely unknown in road construction world, were engaged by the administration to execute the projects. Several roads were actually opened and this elicited high hopes and acclamation from the people. With time, some pictures started filtering in. Pay-loaders were seen grading roads, preparatory to asphalting. Imo people equally started hearing that some of the contractors were spending their personal or borrowed monies to execute the road projects. The same was also true of the numerous but unfinished gates in Owerri municipality.

Confirming this in a recent release, Okorocha’s former media aide, who now doubles as President, South East Progressives Assembly, SEPA, Mr. Ebere Uzoukwa, described the scenario as part of Okorocha’s “use and dump and Almajiri politics”.

His words: “Why did he (Okorocha) subject contractors to execute government projects with borrowed funds only to dump and deny them at the point of payment? Is Governor Okorocha unaware that some of those contractors have miserably lost their lives and valuables to banks that loaned them funds?”, Uzoukwa asked. Okorocha, who did not want to be drawn into the issue raised by Uzoukwa, however told journalists that since he had the final say on who gets what contract, there was no point going through the rigmarole due process.

The Minister of External Affairs 1, Professor Viola Onwuliri, and many other critics of the administration, who were not amused by the Governor’s reply, accused Okorocha of  awarding contracts for road and some other projects verbally.

It was the considered opinion of the fiery Minister that the situation explains how and why most of the road projects do no have engineering drawings or pass through the state tenders board, as well as get abandoned midway or sub-standardly executed.

Delivering a lecture organized last week in Owerri by Rotary Club of Owerri Metropolitan, on why roads fail in Imo State, Engr. Jude Ujah identified lack of engineering design and proper supervision of all road projects awarded to contracting firms by the administration as being largely responsible for the short life span of the roads.

“The construction of any road must pass through three critical stages. These include the designing, the construction and the usage. Our problem in Imo is that we got the first phase wrong because two thirds of the roads constructed by the state government are not designed”, Ujah said.

He said that the design gives the specification, which he said “varies from a portion of the road to the other”.

Continuing, Ujah explained that the soil strata has to be studied, adding that samples are supposed to be taken to the laboratory, so as to determine the constituent materials that would be used for the construction of any road.

He expressed shock that “from the speed with which these new roads started failing in the state goes to show that the existing drainage pattern, among other parameters, was not studied”.

His words: “The problem we are facing now is that the design is not there. What we have always seen is a bulldozer layin.