Why Contractor Handling Ado/ Akure Highway Can’t Perform – Gov Fayemi

By Ayodele Oni

Hope seems deemed on the possible early completion of the rehabilitation of the Ado Ekiti/ Akure highway by the Federal Government, as only one billion Naira is allocated to the work in 2021 budget.

The road, which is one of the links between Ekiti and Ondo States has become a death trap, and kidnappers den.

Hardly will a month pass without reported cases of kidnapping along the road with the recent one involving a Catholic Priest early December.

Transporters that still manage to ply the highway have astronomically increased fares for a journey of, ordinarily, not  more than 30 minutes which now takes not less than two hours.

Ekiti state Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, disclosed in a Radio programme in Ado Ekiti that his administration has made efforts to construct the road, but the Federal Government said it would do it despite the fact that his administration had accessed fund for the road project.

He explained that the fund was given to the Federal Government which, had in turn, awarded the road to a contractor.

“The one that is of major concern to most of Ekiti people is the Ado-Ikere-Akure road, that is one road that we’ve spent more time trying to address than any other road.

“The challenges that we are facing is due to the nature of our federal system. We got money to fix the road, the owner of the road refused, saying that we cannot fix the road.

“We transferred the money to them, they awarded the contract, there is a contractor on the road as we speak, but they don’t have enough allocation from the Federal Government in the budget in order to accelerate the work.

“It’s a N30-Billion contract, but if you check the 2021 budget, only one Billion Naira was allocated for that road.”

It was further gathered that the last time the contractor was seen working on the road was last year when Ondo State Governorship election was drawing closer and withdrew from site immediately after the election.

On pensioners welfare, Governor Fayemi disclosed that his administration has paid over one Billion Naira to ameliorate the suffering of the senior citizens despite dearth of fund in the State.

According to him, Government has already looked for ways through promissory note with financial institutions to access fund to clear the backlog of gratuity, but for one reason or the other, the pensioners rejected the agreement.

The rejection, according to sources, and was due to the insistence by Finance houses to deduct certain percentage from the pensioners entitlements, which they described as outrageous.

The Governor denied that the State collected bailout from the Federal Government to pay arrears of workers’ salaries, saying what the State got was a bridge finance to fill the hole that has been created by the deduction for the repayment of an earlier bailout.