FG Terminates Port Harcourt–Aba Highway Contract Over Poor Performance

The Federal Government has terminated the 43-kilometre Port Harcourt–Aba Road contract handled by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) due to persistent poor performance, the Minister of Works, David Umahi, has said.

Umahi made the announcement while addressing journalists shortly after inspecting the project on Sunday, noting that the contractor’s repeated failure to improve its work had caused sections of the road to collapse despite significant funds already expended.

According to the minister, the government will now engage a competent indigenous contractor to take over and complete the project.

“Today is 19th of October. The Controller reported to me that the Aba-bound of Port Harcourt–Aba Road being constructed by CCECC is at the verge of total collapse.

“This job, 43 kilometres from Port Harcourt to Aba, is an inherited project, and since we came on board, we have been doing everything, putting funds to see how we can finish one carriageway.

“And so we started working with CCECC on this one carriageway using concrete to do the inner shoulder and the outer shoulder so as to ensure the road lasts, while they are using asphalt to do the 7.3 carriageway.

“And their method of construction has been a very serious source of concern, where you will do binder for over a stretch of 30 kilometres and you are not putting wearing,” he said.

Umahi added that several letters had been sent to the contractor to maintain the road, but these warnings were ignored.

The minister further warned that although the contract has been terminated, CCECC must mill out the binder already laid as it had been paid for, cautioning that all their projects in Nigeria could be shut down if they failed to comply.

Expressing disappointment, the former Ebonyi State governor said it was regrettable that contractors handling multiple federal projects could still deliver substandard work.