SUBEB threatens to drag erring contractors to EFCC

The Benue State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) on Wednesday threatened to drag erring contractors handling the construction and rehabilitation of some primary schools projects in the state before the Economic Financial Crime Commission (EFCC).

Chairman of SUBEB, Rev. Philip Tachin, said the board would compile all the names of the defaulting contractors and forward same to the EFCC if those involved fail to complete their various projects for which they have collected monies by December, next month.

“I have given them until December and if they don’t comply with directives, I will compile their names to the EFCC. The projects were meant to be completed in 12 weeks but its over three years now and the contractors are delaying the work,” he said.

Tachin noted that the board had earlier terminated nearly 90 primary schools projects which were abandoned by some contractors in parts of the state.

He told newsmen in Makurdi that the projects which were awarded specifically to be completed in 12 weeks had lasted in the hands of the erring contractors who complained of inflation for over three years.

The board chairman worried that even when he called over 120 of the contractors for a meeting at his office last week, only 16 of them showed up as he stressed that the contractors who have left their projects at various stages of incompletion do not even care about the effect on education in the state.

Daily Trust reports that the present administration of Governor Samuel Ortom on assumption of office in 2015 paid N3.8 billion as counterpart funding to match the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) intervention fund of N3.8 billion.

The state thereafter accessed the total of N7.6 billion for the facelift of primary schools with which the board embarked on 740 projects to give the public schools a new lease of life. But in September this year, the board chairman had told our correspondent that 426 projects have been completed while 229 were still under construction and rehabilitation.

Tachin also informed that more than 50 public primary school structures were destroyed this year alone during gunmen attacks on rural communities in the state, leaving more than 20,000 children forced out of school while over 16, 000 of these pupils are now housed in various internally displaced person’s camps across the state.