A certified public chartered accountant, Lanre Banjo, has urged the Minister of Works, David Umahi, to remain steadfast on the new standard he has set in road construction in the overall interest of Nigeria.
He said: “I seize this rare opportunity to urge the minister to remain steadfast and undeterred in your avowed mission to do what is right and proper for this country. You have proven to be worthy of your appointment by President Ahmed Tinubu and | wish you all the best in the discharge of your duties.
“I watched a video on social media about your meeting with contractors handling projects in Nigeria. The passionate manner in which you expressed yourself with unshaken love for Nigeria about the design of the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano road, which you described as an overkill and the general construction of roads in Nigeria is well appreciated by a few of us who genuinely love this country.
“I applaud your stand and insistence that from kilometre 0 to 38, the design of the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano road must be with concrete. No reasonable compatriot should disagree with this professional and genuine advice for an alteration in the initial grandiose overkill design of the road and the new policies you are putting in place to ensure the government gets value for monies spent on projects.”
Banjo, in a letter to the minister, said infractions in the award and in the implementation of the contracts are the bane of the eyesore of infrastructure in the country.
He also proffered five approaches, including whistle blowing, patriotism, prosecution of defaulting engineers and consultants, and citizens participation in project monitoring, which he said if adopted, would ensure quality services in contract execution.
”Whistle blowing, if already in place, must be strengthened and enforcement must be given an impetus; citizens must be mobilised to show a sense of patriotism as a cardinal catalyst for change in the way they perceive projects being undertaken or have been undertaken by the government. They need to realise they own these projects and the contractors are paid from their sweat.
“Supervising engineers and consultants that collude with contractors must be fished out and penalised. All illegally acquired wealth must be recovered from them; Consultants that are found to be culpable must not only be blacklisted from getting any government contract but prosecuted with a view to recovering any illegal wealth from them.
“Our government must encourage our citizens to be in the construction business. This would impact the strength of the naira over foreign currencies.
“Poor execution of contracts by contractors and complicity of supervising engineers and in some cases, consultants, fuel the misappropriation of our common wealth and leave the nation with defectively constructed infrastructure with bloated costs.
“It is of great economic concern that some supervising engineers and consultants approve the charge for equipment not deployed to sites and milestones that are mostly not achieved to be inserted into progress certificates and certified for payment. They often also collude with contractors to submit undeserved variation claims to contract sums and go to the extent of getting these fraudulent claims to be approved.
“These false and criminal claims are passed through the bureaucracy of the supervising ministry to ministers, some of whom may be innocent, to approve these deceptive claims to be paid.”