…as Wike disowns liabilities
By Sarah NEGEDU
A group of indigenous contractors, on Monday, stormed the gate of the Federal Capital Territory Administration secretariat demanding payment for alleged debts, estimated at over N5.2 billion, owed them by the FCT Administration.
The amount, contractors said covered refuse evacuation, road patching, electrification, borehole drilling, renovation, supplies, and other emergency works.
The contractors who said they were left with no choice but to take their protest to the FCTA gate after repeated letters and appeals yielded no response, vowed to remain at the entrance without barricading it until the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, personally addresses their grievances.
Speaking on behalf of the group, Adebola Benson, said many of the contracts were emergency interventions carried out at short notice to avert breakdown of critical services in the city.
He said such jobs often arose when infrastructure collapsed suddenly, leaving officials with no time to run through long procurement processes.
According to him, “When emergencies happen, like when the road lighting system fails around Diplomatic route and dignitaries like the president are passing, or when there is a major water pipe burst, you will not wait for procurement processes before you fix them.
“Some of us are called, even at night, to respond to such challenges. That is how some of these debts accrue,” Benson said.
He alleged that while the previous administration paid contractors in bits, it left substantial liabilities behind. “Some of the debts accrued from the last minister’s time before Wike came, and he too has incurred some debts.
“However, the previous minister used to pay piecemeal and left some unpaid. When Wike came, we complained, he paid a bit and stopped since then. We are appealing to him to please pay us,” he stated.
Benson also dismissed allegations that contractors connived with civil servants to inflate figures. He argued that while a few individuals might have been involved in questionable dealings, it would be unfair to lump every contractor into the same bracket.
“If the authority has such evidence, they can act on it. But it would not be fair that a few people are allegedly involved in shoddy deals and then all contractors are punished,” he said.
Citing a specific example, Benson said boreholes executed under the FCT Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASSA) were commissioned by government, yet contractors had not been paid for the work.
However, in a strong rebuttal, the Minister’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication and Social Media, Lere Olayinka, dismissed the claims as misleading, insisting that Wike had not awarded any contracts to the aggrieved group.
“No contract was awarded to any of the local contractors by the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike. If they have documents showing award of contracts by the Minister, they should produce them,” Olayinka said.
He explained that on assumption of office, Wike met an inherited bill of about N10 billion under what was tagged “Shopping” or Minor Procurement, covering jobs executed before his tenure.
The Minister, according to him, immediately approved payment of over N5 billion in December 2023, and by January 2024 cleared another N5 billion, thereby settling the outstanding liabilities.
Olayinka, however, said that barely three months later, contractors again presented a fresh bill of over N15 billion under the same Minor Procurement. This raised questions, as Wike maintained he never awarded such contracts.
“How can you claim to have carried out jobs worth over N15 billion within three months, without the approval of the Minister? How can you accumulate over N15 billion debt on contracts within three months?” Olayinka queried.
He further pointed to inconsistencies in the figures being bandied about by the contractors. “From N15 billion to N8 billion and now N5 billion, the question is, on whose authority were the contracts awarded? Those are the questions they have to answer first,” he said.
