FG re-awards Abuja-Kaduna Road contract

The federal government has announced that the revoked section of the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano highway has been re-awarded to Infoquest Nigeria Limited.

It would be recalled that the government had revoked section 2 of the road, which connects Abuja to Kaduna, from Julius Berger Construction Company over price dispute.

Speaking during an inspection of the road, the Minister of Works, Sen. David Umahi, said the company was given the contract after the ministry secured a ‘No Objection’ of N252.89 billion from the Bureau of Public Procurement and would present the contract for ratification at the next sitting of the Federal Executive Council.

Explaining why the contract for the section was revoked from Julius Berger, Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, said Julius Berger Plc drastically reduced the pace of work on site and wrote a letter to the Federal Ministry of Works requesting for a review from N797bn to N1.5trn representing an increase of 88.21%.

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An amount the federal government was not willing to pay.

He said after so much back and forth, a Selective tendering process was used in which six contractors including Julius Berger Plc were invited to tender.

According to him, the six contractors are as follows: M/s Julius Berger Nig. Plc, M/s Hitech Construction Company Limited, M/s Infoquest Nigeria Limited, M/s CBC Nigeria Limited, M/s CCECC Nigeria Limited and M/s CGC Nigeria Limited.

“I am happy to announce that as at yesterday, we got “No Objection” from BPP for a total of N252.89 billion contract sum and I am very sure that FEC will give us approval at next sitting but let me say that we added 10.6 kilometers at the Kano axis to take the project to Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport and we added another 5 kilometers towards Kogi and also full solar light installation to prepare the entire road for operation and maintenance concessioning,” he said.