The Federal Government has asked the Ministry of Works to review the Second Niger Bridge contract and justify its actual cost.

The Director-General of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Aminu Dikko, disclosed this to State House journalists on Wednesday after briefing President Muhammadu Buhari on the activities of the commission.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan had in 2014 flagged off the N117 billion Second Niger Bridge in Onitsha, Anambra State.

The project, awarded to Julius Berger in a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement, is expected to link business arteries of the South East with the South West and North.

Jonathan had then announced that in order to facilitate timely delivery of the contract, his administration had made a commitment to contribute 25 percent of the construction cost in the sum of N30 billion, assuring that the project would be delivered in four years.

[b]But the ICRC boss said on Wednesday said that the commission had seen a lot of issues in the project which it was uncomfortable with and had been discussing the transaction with the Ministry of Works.

"The Second Niger bridge is one of the projects we discussed with the president. We did say yes, it is in the commission for regulatory oversight. We have been discussing the transaction with the Ministry of Works. But before it can be finalised, the commission has to give a certificate of compliance.

But we haven't proven that because we've seen a lot of issues that we're uncomfortable with. We're talking with the ministry of works for them to correct it. The communities around that area are clamouring that their lands have been taken and that they've not been compensated adequately.

"As a matter of fact, we got a letter from Onitsha Traditional Council complaining that they've not been adequately represented in this transaction. This kind of issues, we're not saying that something has not been done properly, but we need to be convinced that these few problems are sorted properly.

We will also talk about the actual cost of the bridge. Eventually, we have asked the Ministry of Works to review it and justify how much the project should cost", he said.

Dikko, who hinted that Buhari raised the issue of PPP transactions, said though the ICRC regulates how such transactions come into being, they have to be developed before they come into effect.

He said Buhari had directed that ministries, departments and agencies should ensure they have adequate funding for project development in their budgets and that if they do not, they should look for alternative ways of getting such funding.
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fulanimafia:
This is a welcome development, hopefully the bridge is completed in no time.

Watch how the main beneficiaries of this probe will expose their myopia on this thread.

Kudos PMB for showing concern to the "five-percenters".

obailala:
The report has not said anything. From the title, a lot of NIgerians in the usual manner will just read the title and start commenting on nothing.

Junk journalism that finally ended with Agriculture and privatisation of silos.