Accept or reject our offer – Umahi warns Julius Berger over 82km Abuja-Kaduna- Zaria Road

The Minister of Works, David Umahi, has called on Julius Berger to show corporate patriotism by accepting the Federal Government’s approved reviewed total contract sum of ₦740, 797,204,713.25 for the completion of the rehabilitation of the 82 km section II of the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano road.

This call was made during the courtesy visit of the new Managing Director of Julius Berger, Dr Pier Lubasch, who was accompanied by the outgoing Managing Director, Dr Lars Richter to the Federal Ministry of Works Headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday.

Umahi lamented that the delay in mobilizing to the site despite the approved funds by the Federal Executive Council was causing untold hardship to the road users and that the Federal Government is at the receiving end of the situation.

This is contained in a statement issued on Wednesday by the Minister’s Special Adviser on Media, Mr Uchenna Orji and made available to Newspot.

The statement read, “So if Berger is not doing it, then let’s have other people do the job and within the time that we can control price. We’ve had more than 20 letters from Berger on this. It is a ping pong game from Julius Berger. The prices rose from ₦710 billion to ₦740 billion. lf we continue the delays, it is the problem of the Ministry of Works.

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He expressed dismay that Julius Berger, which has had years of patronage by the Federal Government and sub-national governments, is not realistic in the contract pricing, especially at this time of Nigeria’s economic challenges.

He urged the contractor to within 7 days accept or reject the approved reviewed contract sum for the completion of the rehabilitation of section II of the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano road or face contract determination as the Federal Government cannot be held to ransom by the desire for unrealistic pricing and augmentation by contractors.

He said, “This offer is not subject to any condition. It’s not subject to any condition that is being dished out here. It’s taken as given after more than 14 months. I’m sorry, I have to sound this way because there must be an end to negotiation. If anybody says there shouldn’t be an end to negotiation, then that person is not a business person. If you have negotiated for 14 months without any result, you should terminate the negotiation.”

While welcoming the new Managing Director of Julius Berger, Umahi reiterated the need for construction companies working with the Federal Ministry of Works to prepare to make sacrifices in terms of value for money and realistic contract pricing to encourage the much-needed road infrastructure revolution for the nation’s economic transformation which is a cardinal agenda of the Renewed Hope administration led by BolaTinubu.

The new Managing Director promised to revert as soon as possible on the issues sought to be addressed and hoped that consensus would be reached for the project to take off without further delay.

The outgoing Managing Director, however, noted that the essence of the courtesy call to the Minister of Works was to introduce the new Managing Director of the company.