Complete And Deliver Within Stipulated Time Or Face Sanctions, Oyo Commissioner For Public Works, Prof. Prof Afonja Tells Contractors
By Henry Odeh
The Oyo state honorable commissioner for public works, infrastructures and Transport, Professor Raphael Afonja has declared that any contractor handling Oyo state road project is bound to deliver on specifications and at stipulated time because the era of spreading uncompleted road construction works across the state leading to avoidable wastage is over adding that the present administration under the leadership of governor Seyi Makinde has zero tolerance for excuses for failure.
Prof Afonja made these remarks in his office today in Ibadan while reacting to questions from Sunrise Bulletin correspondent shortly after returning from a routine project monitoring tour within the state capital in company of some top officials from the ministry.
The honorable commissioner expressed his displeasure over the pace and volume of work done so far, which he described as “unacceptable” and therefore, charged the engineers on site to increase the pace and the quality of ongoing works adding that some of the materials used are of inferior quality and could not meet the expected standard by the state government.
He added further that one of reasons why most of the roads in Nigeria don’t last long after construction is largely because the contractor handling such jobs is either not been completely sincere with provisions of the contract or the government issuing such contract expected some kickbacks that may lead to shoddy jobs with less commensurate value to the funds appropriated for the contract noting that Seyi Makinde’s administration expect to see real value for every penny of taxpayers money committed to public projects and would not accept any job that falls below expectation.
Some of the ongoing road project sites visited by the commissioner include Bere, Iwo road, and Bashorun Akobo project site.
Prof Afonja stated that the ongoing projects are part of the liabilities inherited from the last administration under former governor Abiola Ajimobi which completely denied the ministry of public works any productive role in the process of road construction across the state and rather engaged consultants perform the job of the ministry, he however declared that road construction works in the state are now under direct control and supervision of the ministry of public works.
He charged the contractors to immediately commence working on weekends to include Saturdays and Sundays in their work schedules in order to increase the pace of work adding that whatever is needed by the contractors to ensure prompt delivery of the road projects will be provided by the ministry as excuses for failure to deliver within the next three months will not be acceptable.
