From government’s perspective, the statement was to signpost the fact that the South -East was not marginalised after all. The government also moved to ram in the fact that previous administrations have either refused to properly fund the projects, leading to the prolonged delay.
In the statement, the government said that though the contracts for many of the roads projects were awarded before the advent of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, it claimed they were “either poorly funded or not funded at all, hence work on the roads has lingered.”
According Lai Mohammed, the roads and bridges are now being completed with funds, sourced from budgetary allocations, the Sukuk Bond and the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund.
The confirmation as to whether the projects are ongoing as we speak is not farfetched as I can confess that there are no 69 contractors on the streets of the South East right now. In fact, you will struggle to count 10, as I indeed traversed the Eastern axis two weeks ago.
Rather than attempt to score cheap political points through claims that do not reach the roots of the matter, I believe that our government should quickly effect restructuring as far as the highways are concerned.
In truth, what we have in the South East as released by Lai Mohammed is not a list of ongoing projects but a list of some 50 abandoned projects if we take out those that are less than five years. The fact of the matter speaks for itself.
A peep into the list would show that one of the said projects was initiated in 2005, one each was equally initiated in 2006 and another in 2007. There were six projects initiated in 2010. 12 of the projects were initiated in 2009, 11 in 2012 and seven in 2013. Three projects were initiated in 2014. The records also show that one project was awarded in 2016, three in 2017 and 15 in 2018.
With most of the roads classified as rehabilitation and reconstruction, you want to wonder why such projects would be ongoing for 12, or 13 years.
For instance, how do you classify the N2.09 billion contract for Rehabilitation of Umuahia-Bende- Ohafia Road awarded in 2005 as an ongoing project. How many years does it take to rehabilitate a road, when in less than 10 years, a rehabilitated road would have been due for fresh rehabilitation?
The Yoruba say when it takes a man eight years to practice madness, how many years will he last in that madness, really.
So, instead of dwelling on the politics of it all, the Federal Government and the authorities need to seek explanations as to why service delivery is so poor in this clime. The answer if they care is the need for restructuring of key sectors.
Knowing that no government would introduce a project in this clime just to keep it on paper, as many of the chief executives would want to take credit for a project they initiate. In the case of Umuahia-Bende- Ohafia Road, the rehabilitation is incomplete 13 years after.
Besides the politics of it all, one key issue the government revelation has done is to emphasise the necessity for restructuring. First, you discover that most of the long standing contracts are intra-state roads designated as federal roads.
They suffer from different points. The fact that they are far removed from the eyes of the central government makes funding an elusive matter.
There is also the issue of bureaucratic shenanigans which breed corruption at that level. There are plenty such examples of intra-state roads classified as federal roads in the Lai Mohammed list. Under a restructured polity, many of them ought to be ceded to the states where they exist.
The civil servant who sits in Abuja to process funds for the perceived “far away” projects will not understand whatever “grammar” of urgency the contractor may come up with. He is either not on the seat to process the funds or is too greedy demanding huge kickbacks to be paid upfront before the file is moved.
One of the road contracts that have suffered the shenanigans of federal bureaucracy is the Construction of Ibadan-Oyo-Ogbomoso-Ilorin Expressway, especially the Oyo-Ogbomoso end. This is a project kick started in 2001. 17 years on, it remains uncompleted.
Year in year out, capital votes in the budgets only account for about 30 per cent. Whereas the recurrent votes which stand at 70 per cent and more get consumed 100 per cent, only a fraction of the capital projects are funded due to the unhelpful bureaucracy which does not tie its employees to any performance indicators. The civil servant, under the guise of job security can keep files for as long as he wishes.
If the intra-state roads are not ceded to the states where they belong, such projects will always remain unexecuted for years. Even now, Minister Lai did not give a progress report on the said “ongoing projects.” One key problem is the funding capacity of federal budgets which cannot carry 69 projects per zone. Not even the Sukuk can be of significant help.
Besides the shenanigans that take place around contracts, which fuel corruption, no one can guarantee the execution of those projects with the funding pattern at the federal level. The way out is to restructure by ceding most of the internal roads to the states, while leaving the Federal Government with the key super highways that connect the country from North to South.
and then