By Wilson Goruvwoghor
The video that went viral on Governor Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta state telling a misfit contractor that he wasn’t going to accept a trashy road project, presumed completed, during the governor’s inspection visit, speaks to how debased governance has become in the state.
While praise singers have flooded the viral video with comments heroworshiping the governor as being exceptionally responsible and concerned about quality projects delivery, the reality exposed a governor in show of shame and self indictment.
On the video was a road project so shoddily executed that the governor could see the scam of a job visibly on face value before he vindicated self by probing into the project for a crude integrity test, using his fingers and a cutlass.
There was it. A road project with side drains and erosion control embarkment lacking concrete, just a mixture of cement and sand used to veil the open soil on those critical protective flanks of the road. Of course you don’t need to dig into the main road to tell that even the asphalting may be a thin layer poured to cover the soil directly without no significant layer of sub base applied.
The most repulsive tone to the self indicting drama was the supervising Commissioner for Works, Rural Infrastructures, Charles Aniagwu, asking the contractor stupid questions, like “what was the BEME (Bill of Engineering Measurement and Evaluation) on the project, was there no review on the contract”, in eye service to claim innocence before the Governor. What self embarrassment.
Government contracting processes, including procurement and choice of contractors, is so well organised on paper that it does not support the engagement of quacks I call ‘wheelbarrow’ contractors. Yes, it is hard for charlatans to meet the criteria, technical and material, for winning and executing a government road contract.
And here was a commissioner who should have details and specs of the project as signed on the contract even if inherited from the previous government. Under him are several engineering supervisors of the ministry, on government payroll every month, to ensure infrastructures projects are delivered on quality execution.
So the commissioner and all in the chain of supervision didn’t notice that the road construction was fake from start to finish. Aniagwu had the courage to encourage the governor to come to embarrass self in the name of project inspection. Even the sharer of that footage didn’t realise the damage he was causing the Chief Executive Officer of the state.
This is what you get when partisanship takes precedence over merit and other fair considerations in the choice of appointments and award of contracts. A smart media professional, Aniagwu was brought into mainstream Delta politics and political office by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.
First appointed Chief Press Secretary and then elevated to Information Commissioner, Aniagwu gave brilliant account of self, deploying his communication skills excellently in hyping the Okowa administration against his principal’s abysmal performance, including excessive borrowing without commensurate tangible results to show for it.
How incumbent Oborevwori preferred Aniagwu, trained journalist who did well as Information Commissioner under Okowa, to now lead a Works Ministry and still expects excellence of execution of critical infrastructure projects beats my imagination. Mr. Governor, ‘how market’ now?
However, even when you have the relevant professionals engaged in their spheres of strength, under the PDP hegemony over Delta, they are so consumed by eye-service to the principal that they neglect their core official duties to go about praise singing the governor.
In fairness, this gross misgovernment, induced by the inclination to deliver fake projects never started with the incumbent governor. Since the days of Chief James Ibori, the PDP hegemony over Delta government set the tone for the prevailing culture of shoddy contracts. It has been getting worse by successive administration.
The Warri/Sapele Road constructed since nearly half a century under Gen Sam Ogbemudia military administration era has not experienced collapse till date, but
I challenge the praise singers to point to one road project from the era of Ibori till date that has stayed the test of time. Some have been re-awarded, reconstructed and broken down again.
Whoever told Governor Oborevwori that the show of shame he displayed on that viral video has earned him more trust of Deltans and boosted his political fame does not mean well for him. It is the height of misgovernment for a government to willfully fund the delivery of a shoddy road and then turn around to tell the contractor, “I will not accept this”.
Two intensifiers fuel shoddy government projects. When government shares contracts as compassionate gifts to undeserving, incapable political associates, friends and family, the sense of entitlement often result in shoddy delivery of such projects.
Under the preceding administration, this was evident in the 6.6Km Ikpide-Irri Road, Isoko South LGA, Okowa awarded to Portplus Limited, a company incorporated for marine services.
Vigilant elites in the community rejected the contractor for messy execution of the project.
It took months of hesitation for the Okowa government to accept that what Portplus was delivering was substandard. But rather than cancel and award the contract to a competent hand, a shameless Okowa reviewed the contract sum from original N736Million to up to N1.5Billion, giving false impression that the shoddy execution was as a result of under valuation of the project cost.
Okowa reportedly paid the contractor as he exited amidst controversies surround the project. Sections of the started failing not long after, discouraging incumbent Oborevwori’s administration in commissioning the project that became known as the “kolanut project”, the emblem of Okowa’s government of shoddy projects.
At other times a contractor may be competent, but government authority collude with the contractor to compromise standards and specifications, to deliver inferior, cheaper results, so there is enough misappropriated to filter into private vaults.
Either ways, whether abandoned or rejected by the governor for poor delivery, the mobilisation already doled out is gone. They are never recovered from the fake contractors, based on partisan interest.
That is why even with the PDP having clung to power since 1999, successive administration do not embrace the maxim, government is a continuum with sense of commitment.
The landscape is dotted by pockets of failed abandoned projects. A new administration notices monies, sometimes 100% payment have been released to defaulting contractors that are never held accountable.
So there is never any attraction to pay new money to complete failed project, knowing the glory will go to the predecessor who has used it as kolanut to settle a front or associate. The new man at helms rather initiates and gifts his own contracts to his own clique.
All said and done Mr Governor Oborevwori, the video of you rejecting an inferior project is not responsible leadership. You can’t willfully engage a contractor to execute a fake project and reject the job after releasing funds.
That amounts to avoidable wastage. Sheer economic sabotage, because you need to cough out more of the commonwealth to engage a new capable hands to complete the job.
All said an done, that viral video was not just shameful, it was sheer self indictment. That’s not how to justify misgovernment.
Wilson Goruvwoghor writes from Otu-Jeremi, Delta state
