FG sacks contractor, terminates P’Harcourt-Aba highway contract

The Minister of Works, David Umahi, says the Federal Government has terminated the 43-kilometre Port Harcourt–Aba Road contract being handled by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation due to poor performance.

Umahi revealed this while speaking with journalists shortly after inspecting the project on Sunday.

He said the decision is due to the contractor’s persistent failure to improve its work despite repeated warnings, which has led to the collapse of sections of the project despite huge funds already expended.

According to him, the Federal Government will now engage a competent indigenous contractor to take over and complete the job.

“Today is 19th of October. The Controller reported to me that the Aba-bound of Port Harcourt–Aba Road being constructed by CCECC is at the verge of total collapse.

“This job, 43 kilometres from Port Harcourt to Aba, is an inherited project, and since we came on board, we have been doing everything, putting funds to see how we can finish one carriageway.

“And so we started working with CCECC on this one carriageway using concrete to do the inner shoulder and the outer shoulder so as to ensure the road lasts, while they are using asphalt to do the 7.3 carriageway.

“And their method of construction has been a very serious source of concern, where you will do binder for over a stretch of 30 kilometres and you are not putting wearing,” he said.

Umahi said several letters written to the contractor to maintain the road had gone unheeded.

The Minister further said that despite the termination, CCECC must mill out the binder already laid because it had been paid for, warning that he would shut down all their projects in Nigeria if they failed to comply.