DESOPADEC MD Speaks On Controversial Ikpide-Irri Road, Says ‘I’ve Gone There, I Didn’t See A Substandard Job’

Askia Ogieh, Managing Director of Delta State Oil- Producing Areas Development Commission ( DESOPADEC), may have set a new benchmark of the kind of road projects the interventionist agency would be executing under his watch.

The controversial multi million naira Ikpide-Irri internal road project adjudged as ‘substandard’ following the materials being use to execute it, is not an example of substandard road project, according to Askia Ogieh.

Ogieh who heads a multi-million naira interventionist agency in Delta, accused those protesting about the road as merely “fighting the contractor and trying to pull him down”.

He was caught on a wired tape saying the road project is okay and not being done with substandard materials as being claim by a group of persons including a journalist who had protested about it.

“Everybody that is progressing in Isoko, your duty is to bring him down, Ogieh told the journalist in a telephone conversation, saying “The same thing you were doing to Emma Omojefe. Because of the road the man is doing in Ikpide, you are bring him down”. (Omojefe is the contractor handling the controversial road project)

Going further, Ogieh who was fuming that the journalist called him on phone to get his reacting on issues concerning PDP ward congress in Erowa/Umeh, insisted that the road project cannot be categorise as substandard, “what substandard project, (are you referring to) I have gone to Ikpide-Irri to see the project myself”, he insisted.

When reminded that the state government had visited the project site and recorded the defects in the project, Ogieh resorted “I mine not part of the state government, where do I belong to, I mine part of local government? I am telling you that I was there”.

Asked if he was an engineer, and have knowledge of road execution more that the Ministry of Works engineers who had earlier visited the projects site to verify the claims of substandard materials being use in the project, Ogieh just retorted to saying, “no, no, no, you have a penchant for pulling people down”.

Recalls that the Delta state government had sometimes in August, 2018 during an inspection of the road project by the commissioner for works, James Aguoye, declared the project as not meeting specification, following series of protest and petitions by concerned indigenes and the Isoko Monitoring Group (IMG).

A petition by IMG had alleged that the 6.611km road project awarded in 2017 to PORTPLUS Nigeria Limited, which secured the contract in 2004 with registration number (RC No 607566) as a Marine Logistics and Support Services provider with initiate contract value of N736 million, is being executed with substandard materials.

The petitioners had raised the alarm about the rods and other materials being used in the project owing to the failure of the contractor to adhere to the specification in the drawings and Bill Of Quantity, (BOQ) of the road project.

The state governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, would later in his quarterly media briefing in government house Asaba, sometimes late last year, acknowledged the defects in the project saying “We take responsibility for all of that” assuring that in no distance time, there shall be improvement in standard.