German construction giant Berger Nigeria Plc is to refund N6.1 billion of the contract sum for the East-West road in the Niger Delta, following its withdrawal from the job.
The road runs through Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Cross River and Akwa Ibom states.
The money, which was part of the mobilisation fee collected by the company, will be used to fund the contract that has been re-awarded to Sectraco Nigeria Limited.
These were some of the decisions taken at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja yesterday.
The council approved the re-awarding of the construction of a section of the road for N44, 883,718, 258.18 to Setraco. The project covers Kaima to Ahoada.
The contract was awarded to Julius Berger and three other firms in 2005 for N220billion.
Julius Berger withdrew from the job after two of its expatriates staff were abducted by militants last year. About 6% of the job had been done then.
The contract for the dualisation of the road’s section 11 (1) from Port Harcourt to Ahoada was also re-awarded to Setraco.
Debate on the eight memos submitted by President Umaru Yar’Adua was deferred for four to eight weeks for ministers to make more input.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, Minister of Information and Communications Prof. Dora Akunyili with whom was Minister of State, Niger Delta, Godswill Orubebe, said the council ordered Julius Berger to return the money, since the company decided to pull out on its own volition.
She said the other part of the contract that was deferred in the last FEC meeting had been awarded to Setraco.
The award, she said followed a meeting by the Niger Delta Affairs Ministry, the Bureau of Public Procurements (BPP) and the Ministry of Works.
According to her, “In conclusion of the debate on the road contract, council finally approved the re-award of the contract for the dualisation of East-West road, section 11, subsection 1 Port Harcourt (Eleme Junction) to Ahoada, in favour of messrs Setraco Nig. Ltd, in sum of N29, 922,478,839.19, with 48 months as completion period.”
On security in the region, Orubebe said since the coming of his ministry, “we have been handling the security issues very well”. “We have moved from the approach of two, third party people to direct contact with youths in the creeks. There is every guarantee that in the very near future, the security issues would have been resolved to a very reasonable level and we believe that the contractors that are going back to work now will have no problems. We will stand by them to ensure that the jobs are done. It has been explained to everybody over and over that if we need development we don’t have to create crisis, we need to support the contractors.”
On the bills stepped down, Orubebe said: “I don’t think there is a problem in it. You will remember this is not autocracy but democracy and that is the beauty of democracy. The President had a memo and a minister says I am not comfortable with this and it is stepped down, that is the beauty of democracy and we should be happy about it.”
He went on: “When discussion started we found that some ministers had some issues that needed clarifications. They were, therefore, stepped down for another four weeks so that ministers can look at them again and give their input to the final bills to be discussed in council.
“This is a democracy. These bills were submitted by various ministries and of course some parastatals submitted through ministries, BPP and others to the Presidency. And when they were presented to us yesterday – don’t forget that we got the documents maybe two days ago – because Council is every week, when we got the documents two days ago we had the opportunity to study them in other to find out what to contribute at the meeting because documents are distributed earlier so that ministers will read them and get their positions ready for council.
“After studying these documents in our various ministries we found out that there are areas we needed some clarifications and when we came to the meeting this morning and raised them, the President decided to withdraw them for us to go and do more home work. So it is not that the ministries were not involved but remember some of these discussions were carried out years ago, many of them did not start last week or two weeks ago and sometimes things crop up and they need to be taken into consideration.
“What is important is that the bills were not dropped but you can say that they were deferred to get more input. Don’t forget some of us came in, in December, we have studied it and some of us have some ideas to add to what is supposed to be sent to the National Assembly and we need to be given time to re-study it and then get back to Council and give our own input.”