Umahi’s Critique Of Contractors: Who Assessed And Contracted Them? -By Isaac Asabor

When the Minister of Works, David Umahi, takes aim at contractors handling federal road projects, he is often speaking to a problem Nigerians know too well: roads that consume enormous sums of public money but deliver disappointingly little value.

The minister has repeatedly expressed frustration over abandoned projects, poor workmanship, delays and contractors whose performance falls short of expectations. His criticisms resonate with millions of Nigerians who spend hours navigating failed roads, damaged bridges and construction sites that appear to have become permanent features of their communities.

But there is a question that should not be swept aside amid the minister’s justified anger at poor performance: ‘Who assessed these contractors before they were awarded the contracts?” And perhaps an even more important question follows: “Who contracted them in the first place?”

It is tempting for government officials to portray contractors as the sole villains whenever public infrastructure projects go wrong. But contractors do not ordinarily wake up one morning and award federal contracts to themselves. They participate in procurement processes, submit bids, undergo evaluations and, ultimately, receive letters of award from government.

Therefore, when a contractor turns out to be technically incapable, financially weak, chronically slow or deficient in the quality of work delivered, Nigerians deserve to know where the procurement process failed.

If a contractor was not competent enough to execute a major highway project, why was the contractor considered competent enough to win the contract?

This is not an attempt to absolve irresponsible contractors. Far from it. Contractors who collect public money and fail to deliver according to specifications should face the consequences. Poor workmanship on roads is not merely an aesthetic problem. It can translate into accidents, damaged vehicles, lost man-hours, higher transport costs and, in extreme cases, deaths. In fact, accountability must travel in both directions. A contractor who fails should answer questions. So should the officials and institutions responsible for evaluating the contractor’s capacity before awarding the job.

Without a doubt, the issue becomes particularly important because federal road construction is not a small business. Such contracts can involve billions of naira, sophisticated engineering requirements and projects stretching across hundreds of kilometers. It therefore defies logic to award such projects without rigorous scrutiny of a contractor’s technical capacity, financial strength, equipment, personnel, experience and previous performance.

Given the foregoing view, it is expedient to opine that if such scrutiny was properly conducted, then poor performance should trigger another question: what changed after the award? Was there inadequate funding? Were there variations to the original scope? Were certificates not paid on time? Did inflation render the original contract sum unrealistic? Did insecurity prevent access to the project corridor? Did the contractor lack the equipment claimed during bidding? Or was the contractor simply overestimated during evaluation? These questions matter because not every delayed road project is necessarily evidence of contractor incompetence.

There are projects where contractors complain about delayed payments. There are others affected by rising costs of materials and equipment. Some are located in areas where insecurity makes mobilization dangerous. In other instances, the original contract may have become economically unrealistic because of inflation and exchange-rate volatility. But where none of these factors exists and a contractor simply performs badly, the government should have little difficulty reviewing the contract.

Against the backdrop of the foregoing view, the minister’s tough stance is therefore welcome. His insistence that contractors must meet agreed standards can only benefit Nigerians. What would be more reassuring, however, is for the same standard of accountability to extend to the procurement chain. Government should not merely ask contractors, “Why have you failed?” It should also ask those who selected them, “Why did you select them?”

There is another uncomfortable dimension to this conversation. If a contractor has consistently performed poorly on government projects, how does that contractor continue to secure fresh contracts?

A serious procurement system should have institutional memory. The performance history of contractors should follow them from one project to another. A company that abandoned one major project or delivered substandard work should not simply change location, submit another bid and start afresh as though nothing happened.

Nigeria needs a robust contractor-performance database that records the history of every major government contractor. Such a database should indicate projects awarded, contract values, completion records, delays, quality assessments, penalties imposed and reasons for termination where applicable. That would make it considerably harder for poor performers to recycle themselves into new contracts.

It would also protect competent contractors from the blanket suspicion that often accompanies public criticism of the construction industry.

Umahi’s background as an engineer gives his criticism of construction quality considerable weight. His insistence on standards should be encouraged. But engineering standards should begin before the first truck enters a construction site. They should begin at procurement. This is as the integrity of a road project is not determined solely by the quality of asphalt eventually laid on the highway. It is also determined by the quality of the decisions that preceded the laying of that asphalt.

If government selects the wrong contractor, negotiates a defective contract, fails to provide the necessary funding or inadequately supervises execution, the eventual failure cannot fairly be attributed entirely to the contractor. This is why the minister’s criticism should become an opportunity for a broader examination of Nigeria’s public procurement system. Who recommended the contractor? Who evaluated the bid? Who certified the contractor’s capacity? Who approved the award? Who supervised the work? Who certified the work done before payments were made? And who was held responsible when things went wrong? These are not witch-hunt questions. They are accountability questions.

Nigerians have heard enough explanations about why roads fail. What they increasingly want is a system in which failure has consequences, not only for the contractor holding the shovel, but also for those who handed him the contract.

The Federal Government should therefore complement Umahi’s contractor-focused approach with an equally uncompromising review of the processes through which contractors are selected and projects are supervised. If a contractor is bad, blacklist the contractor where the law permits. If an official compromised the procurement process, investigate the official. If a supervising consultant failed, hold the consultant accountable. If funding caused the delay, tell Nigerians. If insecurity caused the problem, say so. If a variation became necessary, explain why.

But if the government itself selected a contractor whose inadequacies were reasonably discoverable before the award, then government cannot wash its hands of the consequences. After all, “contractors do not contract themselves.”

And that is the uncomfortable question at the heart of Umahi’s critique: before Nigerians are told that a contractor failed, they deserve to know who first told the government that the contractor was good enough to be trusted with their money.