Why projects in South-east are abandoned –Ngige
From GEOFFREY ANYANWU, Awka
Wednesday, November 16 , 2011


Ngige
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For over 12 months , the South-east geo-political zone has been hit hard by untold hardship and uncountable losses of lives due to the death traps on the federal roads in the zone . The Federal Government has been paying only lip service to rehabilitation of roads in the region.

Year after year, all federal roads in the South-east, especially the ever-busy Enugu-Onitsha, Enugu-Port Harcourt expressways appear in the budget of the Federation, yet no reasonable work is done on the roads, ditto other federal projects, including the Second Niger Bridge which purported construction was commissioned by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

However, the disenchantment of the people of the South-east and their threat seem to have touched their representatives at the National Assembly who now are said to be working together to ensure that the zone is treated with respect and given infrastructure like other zones.

One of the moving forces in this new spirit in the National Assembly is Deputy Chairman, Senate Committee on Power and Mine and former Governor of Anambra State, Senator Chris Ngige, who in this interview with Daily Sun revealed what the South-east caucus of the National Assembly is doing to ameliorate the situation.
Dr Ngige spoke on the roads and why the jobs were not being executed; the second Niger Bridge which he said was commissioned for construction without design, the taking away of the South-east slot in the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court to another zone and other burning issues.

South-east roads
Alor in Idemili South is my place of origin. If anything happens to anybody, you run to your province and from your province to your place of birth; that’s what Gaddafi did. He had to run from Tripoli to his birth place and he said he should be buried with his forefathers. So, the custom is the same everywhere. So, there we are in that Senate as senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, legislating for the whole country, for the betterment of the whole people, and we then place our eyes to the peculiarities of our zone.

It is not true that nobody has said anything about the South-east roads. Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu had to go to the Minister of Works. Senator Andy Uba visited there too. I did not visit there, but when the man was being screened, I knew he was going to go to Ministry of Works, having looked at his CV and if you watched our screening, I asked him questions that concern roads and contract management in Nigeria, because you will be thinking about the roads and blaming everybody. Yes, it is true that they gave poor quality contractors our roads, but a contractor like Setraco is not a poor quality contractor.

He worked for me in Anambra State here. He did the road from Igboukwu through Ezinifite, Uga, Amesi, Umuchu, Umunze, Ogbunka, and Owere-Ezukalla into Isuochi. The road is seven years old, it’s carrying traffic, and it’s a good road. He also did for me Awka-Etiti, Nnewi, Utu, Ukpo, Osumoghu, Iseke. The roads are there shining, no crack, no single crack. I paid these contractors as at when due and they were happy working for me.

On Port Harcourt-Aba-Umuahia-Enugu expressway, we have been on that road for nearly seven years now or more. If you probe on why they have not been delivering, you will discover that government has not fulfilled their own part of the bargain of the contract; they have not been paying for continuity of those contracts.

If you go to Enugu- Onitsha expressway which they gave to CCC and one other contractor which they divided into parts, the contractors are not wonderful, but if you give them excuse to hide under non-payment, they will readily do so. Nigercat did so many roads for me in Onitsha, including Oguta Road which was in a very dilapidated state, Port-Harcourt Road and I went on supervision. I followed them up with serious supervision because I couldn’t trust them. I couldn’t trust their words because they tendered and bided the lowest. Even CCC did Mili John from Oba, Ojoto, to Umoji road. The road is still shining till today. So, everything depends on managers of contracts. I do not say that the contractors are blame-free, they are also to be blamed because I can see poor quality jobs being done on this Enugu- Onitsha expressway. If I’m their client, I will not take the job. I will come and condemn them and excavate them and they will re-do a large portion of them.

South-east caucus decision
So, we have decided as South-east caucus that we will make sure that there is good appropriation for this project in the 2012 budget. The former money that was there was project fund that were gathered by the senators themselves and pushed into this project. As we speak now this year, only the first quarter capital was released. They just released the second quarter the other day; and third and fourth are going to follow. No problem let them be released. Now that they are released, we domicile them in these ministries and that’s what is introduced into the budget as roll-over so that the money will not expire. Once there is a roll-over, it will not expire and we shall appropriate something for 2012 and with that we shall have enough funds. We shall do oversight.

We have agreed in the South-east caucus that even those of us that are not in the committee on Works, we will go on the roads that are in our areas, and I can tell you that I will head the team that will be inspecting federal roads in Anambra so that the people will better sit up. So, there will be sharing of functions, but on a global basis.

The committee is representing the interest of the Senate. So, this is what we have agreed to do; appropriate the funds, do serious oversight in terms of supervision of these contractors and the Ministry that is giving down the job and we have the capacity to do so because providentially, I won’t say its tactically, the committee for Works in the Senate is headed by Ayogu Eze, a Senator from Enugu State of the South-east. The committee on Works, House of Representatives is headed by Hon. Ozomgbachi from Enugu State. The committee on FERMA is also headed by another lawmaker from Enugu State. So, we will have no excuse not to oversight these people or not to do a correct appropriation.

South-east slot in Supreme Court
If you also watched the deliberations in the Senate, I’ve also complained about the taking away of one slot of the Supreme Court position zoned to the South-east and given to one of our sisters married to River State, Justice Odili. She is my family friend, she is an erudite judge, very intelligent, but the truth of the matter is that she is married to a man from River State and she started her career as a magistrate from River State’s lower bench and moved to be judge in River State and moved to the Court of Appeal on River State’s slot. So, to now move her to Supreme Court with a slot of the South-east is even a disrespect to her, it’s a slight to her, for them to do that.

I raised it on the floor of the Senate when we were confirming Justice Oloruyi Ola and the Senate President on the chair informed me that in the Sixth Senate, screening was done and it was marginally raised, but that from the papers before them, the appointing authority which is the NJC, the president nominated her based on the slot of the South-east and I said it’s unacceptable to me and I will raise it at the appropriate time for that error to be rectified, so that South-east will get another slot. We can’t be short-changed like that.

Second Niger Bridge
We are doing what we are supposed to do. The road from Port Harcourt to Enugu is now our first line priority. The one from Enugu to Bridgehead, both of them rank higher and we are also doing something about Second Niger Bridge. It is now that it has been discovered, the anomalies, the untruth that have enveloped that particular project, and as we speak now, some foreign investors are coming to partner with us to make that bridge a reality. If we don’t do it that way, that bridge will not be built because as I speak to you, there is no engineering design.

Whatever has been paraded before you before was just a smoke screen, an effigy of lies and deceit that was told to you earlier on by the Federal Government, especially those who went and said they are commissioning it in 2007. You know those; Obasanjo was there, Andy Uba was there, Peter Obi was there, James Ibori was there, Uduaghan was there, outgoing and incoming. They were all there and they did that. But we are all alive and that is the good thing about life. So, there is nothing there as we speak. So, a new study has been commissioned for designs for that bridge and with God supporting us, we are hopeful that the designs will be ready in the next 15 months.

It was commissioned about two months ago, so we expect the designs back not in 15 months, but 18 to 24 months. It is taking that time because we have now included rail into the design. There was no rail in the former ones they were doing. We need a rail so that when the rail line comes down from Lagos; that is the West-East rail that will go to Port Harcourt through Benin- Asaba, Onitsha- Owerri- Aba, then to Port Harcourt. We want that rail design synchronized into the bridge. With that, it’s a new development, a new kettle of fish altogether. So, we had to start the design all over again.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2011/nov/16/national-16-11-2011-0015.html

No surprises there.
The same story all over Nigeria.
But everyone wants to troop to Lagos and Abuja to set up businesses.
God bless Boko Haram.

hmmmm peter obi hope you listen

Bleep all the Eastern reps.