Two hundred and ten contracts out of seven hundred and ten awarded by the Benue State Universal Education Board SUBEB, across some primary schools have been abandoned.
This is even as 40 completed and ongoing contracts in some schools
have been destroyed during the herdsmen attack on Benue.
Chairman of SUBEB, Dr. Philip Tacin who disclosed this to newsmen yesterday in Makurdi noted that the destroyed schools were located basically in Guma, Gwer-West and Logo local government areas of the
state.
He said most of the pupils from the affected schools have been moved to other schools located in safe zones in the affected local governments.
On the abandoned contracts, the SUBEB Chairman noted that the contracts totalling 710 were awarded to contractors in 2015, and a period of twelve months was given to them to complete the jobs.
He explained that more than 500 projects have been completed but that some other contractors have chosen to abandon the projects.
According to him, it was true that some projects were abandoned and the board had to review their cases and decided to terminate about 90 of the contracts from contractors who could not execute their job.
He said it became necessary to terminate the contracts because the contractors abandoned them and were not going there.
“These people abandoned their jobs. We spoke with them and we wrote to them severally but they refused to do their jobs. So, we had no choice than to terminate their contracts.
“However some of the contracts are at various stages of completion, but these projects were supposed to be completed in just twelve weeks.
“We invited them for dialogue and only 16 of them attended the meeting. It shows that they don’t care about what happens to the job and the plight of the children. It is disheartening.
“Now it’s over three years and so we have compiled a list of 120 of them and we say, if they cannot complete the work by December this year, we will hand them over to the EFCC to explain why they cannot complete the contract of 12 weeks in three years,” he stated.
