The Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, on Friday threatened to terminate the multi-billion naira Benin/Sapele and Ologbo Road reconstruction if the contractors, Levant Construction Company, failed to comply with the scope and specification of the work.
The minister expressed dissatisfaction with the work and subsequently ordered the ministry’s supervising engineers to issue a warning letter to the contractors on Monday and after 14 days should they fail to do the right job, he would personally terminate the job.
Umahi who is on an inspection tour of work done on federal roads in Edo stated that contractors in the country were playing politics with Nigerians and warned that he would not tolerate such under his watch.
He said, “By Monday give them a warning letter to start permanent work and if by Monday they didn’t start give 14 days’ notice of termination. We paid multi-billion naira for this job and we have seen that a lot of contractors in this country are just playing politics with us and we have emphasised this on several occasions.
“We will pay mobilisation fee to a contractor, we will never pay variation on price for that amount we have paid and that is the problem with Levant and after 14 days of notice of termination, if they don’t adhere to the term of the come, I will come and terminate the job myself.
“You cannot do this kind of job in your country, it can only happen in Africa. You can’t collect our money and be misbehaving like this. It is a big shame, look at how people are suffering everywhere and we should be happy clapping for you. I have had more than 10 meetings with them on this Job. If anything goes wrong they will call the President,” he added.
The minister continued with the inspection of the Benin, Ekpoma Auchi and Abuja Expressway.