The affected contracts were the dredging of River Niger, the Kubwa Satellite Town Infrastructure Development District III and IV as well as the Karshi Satellite Town Infrastructure Development District I and II.

The Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, his Transport counterpart, Senator Idris Umar, and the Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory, Chief Jumoke Akinjide, briefed State House correspondents at the end of the meeting presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan.

Umar said the initial contract for the dredging of the lower River Niger was awarded in 2008 to the tune of N34.8bn.

He regretted that at the time the contract was awarded, the independent and confirmatory survey used was carried out in 2002.

He said the changes were discovered shortly after the commencement of the project but the contractors were persuaded to carry on with the exercise.

He said, “Results of Independent and Confirmatory Surveys carried out by five different surveyors, especially on Lot 5 (from Baro-Lokoja) showed that the Bill of Engineering Measurement and Evaluation were not correct as surveys indicated substantial increases in volumes of dredged materials which necessitated the request for the augmentation of the contract sums by a total of N8.528 billion.”

Akinjide said with regard to the Kubwa development contract, the FEC added N23.8bn to the initial N18.8bn bringing the contract value to N42.6bn.

She added that in case of Karshi, N16.6bn was added to the initial N11.5bn in 2007 to bring the contract value to N28.2bn.

The FCT’s contracts alone were augmented to the tune of N40.4bn, while that of the River Niger was augmented by N8.5bn bringing total augmentation to about N49bn.

She said, “With the completion of the final engineering design, there were huge disparities between the original quantities and the final engineering design, and the inadequacies were as a result of changes in specifications, increase in the total number of roads and size of various categories of roads along with the accompanying infrastructure services in the districts.

“The variations in the prices of materials and labour, as well as fluctuation in the currency exchange rate also contributed to the increase in the cost of the projects.”

-Punch

Posted by admin on Nov 3 2011. Filed under Latest Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry