By Kanu Samuel
Hon. Niyi Akingunola, the Ondo East/West House of Representatives Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) has queried the Hon Minister for Works Engr. David Umahi over his decision to reroute the Ondo Coastal Highway away from Ondo State.
In a statement he personally signed, Hon Akingunola stated that the actions of Mr Umahi to divert/modify the Highway out of the shore of Ondo State midway into the project implementation is a violation of both the appropriation and public procurement Acts, and amounting to shifting goal posts in the middle of a game.
Arguing that it is outright illegality for a procuring entity to vary projects design and cost in the course of projects implementation without recourse to the National Assembly that approved it in the first place.
Hon Akingunola stressed that the Coastal Highway original design followed neccessary Appropriation and Procurement guidelines leading to the issuance of certificate of no objection by the BPP and final budget approval by the National Assembly, hence, any alteration, modification of any kind must be done in accordance with all constitutional and regulatory procedures that produced it in the first place.
Hon Akingunola also stated that “the basis for the issuance of certificate of no objection by the Bureau of Public procurement for the Coastal Highway were valid Bill of Engineering Measurement and Evaluation (BEME), Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Cost Estimate (CE), hence for minister David Umahi to come back to query/disown regulatory documents produced solely by himself and without duress is a great disservice to the people of Ondo State and the country at large”
“Before any project modification can be allowed to succeed under any guise and in this context, a new Bill of Enginerrig Measurement and Evaluation(BEME), Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and cost estimate (CE) must be regenerated and sent to the BPP for onward transmission to the National Assembly for reappropriation, insisting that anything short of this is in its entirety a breach of the Appropriation Act and extant procurement regulations.
He called on all Ondo State indigenes and members of the National Assembly to insist on strict adherence to the rules of law by the Honorable Minister David Umahi in order to safeguard our collective interests as far as the costal Highway project is concerned.
Hon Akingunola reeled out the benefits of the coastal highway to the economic wellbeing of Ondo state people which include reduced travel time of about 1-2hrs, agriculture and food security, tourism and blue economy, trade commerce and industrial development, access to ports and wider markets among others, cautioning the Minister to respect the aspirations of Ondo State people by ensuring that their interests are protected at all time and at all levels.
He concluded that Mr Umahi’s newly fond excuse that the original route crossed terrain with pits more than 100 metres deep and would have significantly increased construction costs is not an emerging fact but a development that should have been captured in the project’s feasibility studies and other regulatory documents such as BEME and BoQ, he also reminded David Umahi that Impact Assessment determines public goods, while cost alone is not enough excuse for government not to deliver public goods for the citizenry, more so that the state is an oil producing State and the people owns the resources that Mr David Umahi is complaining that it is too much to be expended on them.
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