The Federal Government has directed Julius Berger, the contractor handling Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Road to fix potholes in on the road in three days to ease travelers’ movement.
Minister of Works, Engr. David Umahi gave the directive on Wednesday during a meeting with the management of the construction company in Abuja.
Umahi said the potholes were giving bandits the leverage to kidnap road users on the route.
He said, “The essence of this meeting is to know the areas of agreement and areas of disagreement over all the jobs. We have discussed Abuja-Kaduna-Kano to Kano”.
He explained that the project was broken into three where Julius Berger was given 82km by two which is 164km to complete on Asphalt and, Dangote 32 km by two to complete on concrete on tax credit and BUA about 17km to complete on tax credit on concrete.
The minister said the federal government had also gone back to site 10 days ago to flag off the re-engagement of contractors and work was ongoing on the route.
He however said, “We are not very happy with the pace of work by Berger but good quality work. So we have discussed one, is for Berger to stick to one carriage way within their scope and conclude while doing that, they should be able within the next three days, fill all the potholes with stone base.
“If by Friday they have not done that, we’ve given directive to the Director to get some contractors to fill it and then do a memo to the Permanent Secretary so that we can pay from bill 1.
“The lives of Nigerians are very important and we are having kidnapping going on because of these potholes. We have also asked Berger to review what the Independent consultant did, which we had agreed a total of N710 billion which the last administration paid N391 billion and we are to pay about N320 billion for the remaining,” he said.
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