In continuation of our assignment today, the Abia State NDDC Project Verification Committee visited some sites. While we have lamented the situation in other places we visited earlier, today’s experience was so audaciously alarming that we were rooted to a spot for some time, not knowing how or where to move to next.
What pained us most was that this experience has shown us that WE are our own problems and not the federal or state government.
In one of the LGs we visited today, almost all the projects had been marked completed, on paper, including erosion control sites, road and water projects, but our findings show that the contractors have either never mobilised to site or they did but abandoned the project shortly after commencement. In fact, in a particular community, the contractor who is an indigene of the community had been doing “palliatives” on the roads awarded to him by NDDC but never erected any signpost to show that it was a full-blown project, hence, his community had been hailing him for doing for them “what government could not do”, not knowing that the palliatives he was doing were supposed to be a full project awarded to him in hundreds of millions of naira. He had severally been hailed as the community’s “messiah” and his kindred recently rolled out their drums in solidarity and in glowing colours to celebrate his formal opening of a mansion he built right there in his community.
EXPOSED
This contractor, just like many others in the state that we have noticed, got exposed when the Governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, took the bull by the horn and constituted this Verification Committed after the visit of the Acting Managing Director of NDDC recently, and after findings, the people discovered that all the “projects” in their community for which the contractor had been claiming personal credit were actually NDDC projects executed shoddily while many others were abandoned just shortly after takeoff.
At one of the locations, the contractor quickly remobilized to the site after the visit of the NDDC Acting MD about two weeks ago, thereby preempting the Governor’s actions against defaulters.
Our experience with our indigenous contractors was the same as the one we encountered during one of our verification tours last week.
Indeed, the ant that is eating the vegetable dry lives right there in the plant.
One can only imagine how the entire landscape of Abia would have changed more greatly if the entire 679 NDDC projects in the State were executed by the contractors, some of who are our own people even though few of them have actually not been paid for taking off by NDDC.
My people, we are our own problem, not FG, not State government; but we will not relent in what we are doing. This rot must be halted, and everyone must support our Governor in his determination to halt the rot. This is not about any parochial considerations, it is about our State!
