Era of haphazard contract awards over at NDDC – Ojougboh

PORT HARCOURT, River, Nigeria – The Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, says it has set in motion processes that will re-order its systems to help it stop the indiscriminate award of contracts by the Commission. 

The NDDC Executive Director Projects, Dr. Cairo Ojougboh, who stated this during the inspection of some completed projects in Edo and Delta states, frowned at the poor quality of some of the roads and ordered the contractors to return to site and correct the anomalies before payments would be made to them.

He said: “We have said before that going forward, securing contracts from NDDC will no longer be a lottery because before now if NDDC gives you a contract, it’s like you have won a lottery. It is only in this part of the world that things like that happen.  But we are going to put machinery in place first, of all to stop indiscriminate awards of contracts.

“We are already negotiating with the contractors because a lot of the contracts were inflated. So we are talking to them so that those that are not able to continue, we will find a way to determine the jobs, while those that want to continue we will find a way to address the matters that will come up. The important thing is that we will protect the indigenous contractors because we need to build their capacity.”

Ojougboh observed that a situation where contracts worth billions of naira were awarded without payment of mobilization fees was disturbing, noting that it gave room for contractors to cut corners and in the process deliver poor quality job. According to him, “what the commission thought would stop theft, compounded it because you give big contracts without mobilization and allow for sharp practices.” 

The Executive Director of Projects said that the days of sitting in the office was over, stating: “Now we want to see what is going on in the field. We must mobilize our state offices and departments in the various states to be responsible and responsive because if the directors and projects monitoring supervision directors of various states were up to their task, they would not have allowed this to happen because their duty is to supervise contractors. 

“Raising IPCs and assessment for contractors when you know the job is not up to the expected quality is unacceptable.” 

In his own remarks, the Technical Assistant to the Acting Executive Director Projects, Engr. Etim Eyoette, said that in cases where the jobs did not meet up to standards, the contractors had been directed to go back to site and remedy the defaults.

The inspected projects in Edo State included repairs of failed sections of Benin township road lots 1-3 and repairs of failed sections of Ologbo Palm Road.

In Delta State, the NDDC team inspected remedial works on failed and sections of New Ogorode Road in Sapele; Ajaougbeti Road and environs in Warri North; Abigborodo Road; Umuorjiele internal roads Umutu; Internal Roads in Illah, among others.