Benue state governor, Samuel Ortom has ordered for the prosecution of contractors who abandoned work on about 740 primary school projects all over the state.
The governor instructed the Benue State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to furnish relevant government agencies with information about the contractors in order to take appropriate action against them.
He gave this directive while inspecting UBE projects in Makurdi, in readiness for the award of additional projects from the N6.6bn funds available for the next level of interventions.
The chairman of Benue SUBEB, Dr Philip Tacin, last month, had said that 210 out of the contracts awarded by the SUBEB across some primary schools have been abandoned, and about 40 completed and ongoing contracts in some schools have been destroyed by herdsmen attack on Benue communities.
He said the board was forced to review the cases of the abandoned projects and decided to terminate about 90 of the contracts from contractors who failed to live up to expectations.
“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 the end of 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.
