A lawmaker representing the Arochukwu/Ohafia Constituency in the House of Representatives, Uko Ndukwe Nkole, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to probe the circumstances that lead to the abandonment of the Ohafia-Arochukwu Road rehabilitation contract awarded by the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) during Buhari’s tenure as chairman.
Nkole raised questions on the issue when he undertook an inspection of the road, which has been neglected for a long time despite the fact that contracts for rehabilitation work on the road had been awarded at different times.
Elder Kalu, a 72-year-old community leader in the area, told the lawmaker that the road has never been repaired since it was built by the defunct government of the eastern region.
According to Kalu, it is difficult to understand why the road has been neglected for so long.
Speaking to journalists at one of the eroded portions of the road at Ania Ohafia, Representative Nkole, who is a town planner by profession, recalled two previous contracts that were awarded to repair the road.
One of the contracts was said to have been awarded by defunct PTF, which had President Buhari as executive chairman with the late Professor Chimere Ikoku, a notable son of Arochkwu and former vice chancellor of the University of Nigeria Nsukka, as vice chairman.
The second contract, which is supposed to be subsisting but seemingly abandoned, was awarded by former president Goodluck Jonathan’s federal government.
According to Nkole who said he supports president Buhari’s decision to probe into some government activities, urged him to extend same to failed contracts stressing that, in doing so “he should probe why the contract awarded by the PTF under him failed to execute the rehabilitation of the Ohafia/Arochukwu federal road.”
He also urged the Federal Government to help make the contractors finish the job they started so as to alleviate the hardship of the people in that community.
The Guardian