OWERRI—The billions of naira allegedly paid to some contracting firms by Governor Rochas Okorocha’s administration for abandoned projects in the state is now causing serious concern among the citizenry.
*Imo state Governor, Okorocha

*Imo state Governor, Okorocha

All the respondents who spoke to Vanguard on the issue, accused the present administration of being largely responsible for what they described as “the huge fraud rocking the state.”

Speaking to Vanguard, the former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Prince Ken Njemanze, SAN, wondered why the state government should pay huge sums of money to contractors as mobilisation fees, even when they had not moved to their respective sites.

He said: “If due process are followed when giving out these jobs, we would not have been running after the runaway contractors.”

Speaking also, a chieftain of Progressive Peoples Alliance, Dr. Vitalis Ajumbe, reasoned that if the contracting firms were forced to produce bank guarantees, the huge sums of money said to have been stolen by the runaway contractors would have been recovered from the respective banks.

He said: “It is not enough for the governor to tell Imo people that contractors ran away with our money. He should tell the people who these contractors are, give us their addresses and tell us who found them capable of doing the jobs and who ordered the payments.”

He recalled that during a recent tour of the local council areas, the governor reportedly ordered the arrest of some contractors and their associates but expressed regret that no one had so far been arraigned in court after the tour.

“We were told that Mr. Joseph Dina of JPROS was paid a staggering N1.2 or N1.5 billion for a job he never did. The State House of Assembly, rather accused an innocent man of having received a bribe of N458 million and impeached him! This is Imo for you,” Ajumbe said.

When contacted, the Chief of Staff to Okorocha, who doubles as the Chairman, Task Force on Recovering of Funds from fleeing contractors, Sir Jude Ejiogu, said some of them had been declared wanted.

At the time of going to press, neither the governor nor the Chief of Staff or other government officials could say if any money had been recovered from any contractor and how much was recovere d.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/06/imo-indigenes-worry-huge-payments-abandoned-projects/#sthash.J4A1kliZ.dpuf

The abandoned road projects in Imo state........................