Umahi threatens to revoke Benin-Sapele-Ologbo road contract over shoddy job

Minister of Works, David Umahi, on Friday threatened to revoke the multi-billion Naira Benin-Sapele-Ologbo road reconstruction project, if the contractors, Levant Construction Company, fails to comply with the scope and specification of the work.

This was contained in a video clip made available to Our Correspondent on Saturday by the Special Adviser to the Minister of Works on Media and Publicity, Mr Orji Uchenna Orji.

The minister expressed dissatisfaction with the work done by the contractors and subsequently ordered the Ministry’s supervising engineers to issue a warning letter to the company on Monday, March 11, 2024.

He added that if the company fails to do the right job after 14 days, he would personally terminate the contract.

Umahi, who was on an inspection tour of work done on federal roads in Edo State, 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.

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“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. After 14 days of notice of termination, if they don’t adhere to the terms of the contract, 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