Naze and Obibiezena, two communities in Owerri North Local Government Area (LGA) of Imo State, are less than 10 minutes away from the headquarters of the Anambra-Imo, River Basin Development Authority (AIRBDA), an agency under the Federal Ministry of Water Resources. In fact, the agency is sitting on ancestral lands donated by these communities.
Sadly, for more than two years now, AIRBDA has failed to execute a flood and erosion project contract it awarded in the communities, making life difficult for residents and threatening economic activities.
Hon. Ikenna Elezieanya, the current Commissioner for Science and Technology, Innovation and Engineering Services in Imo State attracted the contract as a constituency project when he was a member of the House of Representatives representing Owerri Federal Constituency.
Available data on Govspend, an online tool that tracks and analyses Federal Government spending, shows that the project for flood and erosion control/rural access road along Naze-Obibiezena road Owerri North LGA Imo state was awarded to two different contractors, with amounts running into over N161m.
Stones poured along Naze road
A breakdown of funds released shows that on March 24, 2022, Bonita Bay Limited, registered on December 2, 2009, (with Uchenna Nwangwu and Uchechi Ndeze as directors) was paid N152m (152,591,371) while Headoarc Associates Limited, which was registered on Jun 16, 2008, (with Okafor Ifeanyi, Okafor Chike and Nwosu Jennifer listed as directors) received N8.4m (N8,499,507) on 26 Jun 2023, for the 2.8km project.
However, interviews with multiple sources, including a community leader, who once worked as Elezieanya’s campaign coordinator in Naze, Ebenezer Ahubuibe, showed that no proper construction work was ever done on the road apart from grading and a shallow and incomplete drainage system that has further worsened the state of the road.
On October 2, 2024, the member representing Owerri Municipal, Owerri West and Owerri North in the House of Representatives, Hon. Tochukwu Okere, sponsored a motion drawing attention to the unexecuted Naze-Obibiezena road which, according to him, was expected to boost agriculture in Owerri Federal Constituency.
“The road stretches over 50km to Etche in Rivers State and can serve as a bypass from Owerri to Port Harcourt, avoiding heavy traffic from the Owerri -Port Harcourt expressway, while people coming from Okigwe Aba and Umuahia can also find the road useful and faster as people coming from Imo State Airport have to pass through the heavy traffic of the Owerri-Port Harcourt expressway,” he said in the motion.
But this is not just a story about Naze and Obibiezena, it is a story that uncovers procurement law violations in AIRBDA- an agency that has become notorious for abandoning and sometimes poorly executing erosion and flooding projects across communities in the South-East region.
AIRBDA Headquarters in Owerri
Abandoned Naze Road, a nightmare
Interestingly, business owners and residents along the Naze- Obibiezena Road said that it was not entirely unusable when Elezieanya decided to capture it in the budget for funding. Although it was constructed without a drainage system 15 years ago during the time of a former senator representing Owerri Senatorial District, Eze Ajoku, the road still served residents.
“The road was always busy, with car owners and motorcyclists always plying through to get to their destinations, each time it developed potholes, community members came together and parched it,” Ahubuibe said.
But in 2022, AIRBDA came with trucks, scooped all the asphalt and took them away, Ahubuibe claimed. He added that residents were happy and hoped that the road would be properly constructed. Elezieanya made a post on his X handle, saying that he had handed over the road to a contractor.
Sadly, two years after the money was released, the project has remained uncompleted, making it impossible to drive through because of potholes that continue to widen. Whenever it rains, the entire road is flooded and the water does not recede for weeks. Only (big) trucks ply through the road.
On Monday, October 28, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was sent to AIRBDA and Engr. Gerald Osuagwu, the Managing Director of the agency, requesting specific details of the contract, including the approved budgetary provision, the contract execution period, contract value, the amount paid and the level of completion. Ripples Nigeria also visited the headquarters of the agency with the same letter on October 29, 2024, demanding answers to the same questions.
Engr. Osuagwu, first appointed in 2019, was the Managing Director of the agency when the project was awarded in 2021. He was reappointed after the expiration of his first tenure in June 2023 to serve for another term of four years.
AIRBDA did not respond to the specific questions raised in the FOI request, but Arthur Iroegbu who heads the legal department claimed that the agency hardly abandons projects in communities. He claimed to be aware of the Naze project but did not have the details.
“There was a time that the people agitated about the project and even came to our agency, it was a big issue but they were addressed”, he said.
He further claimed that the road could have been abandoned due to a lack of funds or lack of transparency on the part of the contractors’ handling projects. However, this investigation revealed that that this far from the truth.
Lawmaker allegedly got a share, project subcontracted
While millions of naira were set aside for the project, findings show that not all of them may have been used for the project. One of the Directors at Headoarc Associates Limited (who does not want to be mentioned for fear of victimization) alleged that the project was not originally awarded to the company but to Bonita Bay which he claims, came through Elezieanya, the lawmaker who attracted the project.
He claimed that his company had an understanding with AIRBDA and Elezieanya on how much he (the lawmaker) will be paid from the money for the project so that Headoarc Associates can handle it.
“At the point of payment, a Power of Attorney (giving us the power to execute the project) was prepared”, he alleged.
Sand bags used to create walkway
“At first, we were concerned about payment since we were not the original owners, but one of the directors at the agency brokered the deal for us and told us how much we will pay,” he further claimed.
Ripples Nigeria contacted Elezieanya to respond to the allegations that he received some money from the project, but he denied it, claiming that the project was not subcontracted but handled by two contractors.
“There were two projects along the road, one of them was the drainage and the other was the road project itself. But along the line, AIRBDA got a new contractor because they did not trust the first one to handle the project,” he claimed. “Whoever claims that I got money from the problem is lying, I do not know who the second contractor is”.
Speaking further he said “It is not a crime to attract a project, if it fails, it is nobody’s problem. Except a proper drainage is constructed on the road, any road project will still fail”.
Ripples Nigeria could not also get Bonita Bay to react as there were no trace of the company’s contact details online. At Tunde Ogbeha Street, Adisa estate, Agudu District, Abuja, where the company claims to have its office, a security man there said that there was no office at the location and that it was a residential address.
When Headoarc Associates was grading the road with side drainages
Meanwhile, residents observed that in January 2024, the agency brought tipper trucks, loaded with sharp sand and chippings and poured them on the road after which a bulldozer was used to scatter them along the parts that had developed potholes. This was after it constructed a shallow drainage system that hardly allowed water to pass through.
“When they came, we thought that they wanted to resume drainage construction,” Ahubuibe said. “As the tipper was dropping off the stones, they were taking pictures to appear as though they were working. Some boys were using shovels to scatter the stones along the road after which they left. That was the last time we ever saw anyone come to work on this road.
“There was no proper construction, no blueprint for execution,” he lamented.
Whenever it rains, Ahubuibe’s house and that of other residents are flooded. Three years ago, all the rooms in his compound were submerged. This year, his house was submerged again.
Ahubuibe says his house is often flooded each time it rains
“We do not feel the dividends of hosting the agency, said Ahubuibe – who claims to have safeguarded tractors, rollers and other machines brought for the construction but were never used. “Our community cannot handle the project because of the cost implication,”.
The asphalt that was washed away
In April 2023, Headoarc Associates Limited poured asphalt on the road and by the evening of that same day, when the rain came, everything was washed away. Elezieanya confirmed that the asphalt poured on the road was washed away. He however linked it to a poor drainage system and not poor quality of work as claimed by his former coordinator.
According to Elezieanya, most houses in the community were built along water channels, a structural problem which makes it difficult for water to flow through the drainage channel constructed.
The company Director also confirmed the failed asphalt but also blamed it on the lack of a discharge point for the drainage constructed and its inability to hold the amount of water in the area, alleging that the communities did not allow his company to provide the discharge point.
“We already had our excavator, grader and pale loader waiting to open up the land where water can run into but they refused and because it wasn’t a state project, we couldn’t not force it”.
Passers-bye cannot cross over to get what they want from shops along the road
Residents denied this claim, noting that the company did not request for any discharge point. They said that they were willing to give the contractor every support he needed.
While he acknowledged that the drainage system was the major problem of the area, Ahubuibe said that there was a borough pit along the road where water could be properly channelled.
Even with the claims about the challenge of channelling water along the road, one wonders why the project was approved without a proper environmental assessment of the area to determine potential risks and ways to mitigate them. Further, why did AIRBDA release funds amounting to N161 million which was only used for the construction of an incomplete drainage system that only worsened the erosion situation in the area?
Iroegbu, the head of legal at AIRBDA said that some of the projects are also not one-offs because of their size and the funds involved.
“When we exhaust the funds available, we have to look for more funds and the project would have to wait. So, between that time and when it is captured in the budget and when the contractor will mobilise to the site takes a lot of time”.
Economic activities bear the brunt
With the road abandoned, Naze, which once bubbled with economic activities, now feels like a sleepy town. Findings show that some business owners have relocated due to a lack of patronage because of the massive disruption caused by the very poor condition of the road.
Nwachukwu Christian sells phone accessories by the left on the entrance into the road from Owerri. He said that he hardly makes sales these days because customers are hardly around. He adds that whenever it rains, nobody comes out as the entire road is submerged.
Iruabanachi says she hardly makes sales due to the state of the road
“Formerly, when the road was still motorable, commuters driving past would stop and pick a few things, now, we don’t see them again. They use alternative routes to their destinations and only trucks drive on the road now”.
Entering Naze, it is common to see motorcyclists packed on one end, but they are only waiting to carry passengers through Agballa, which is the alternative and longer route to Obibiezena and other surrounding communities.
To prevent water from entering their shops, some business owners have constructed buffers. Christian said that they used to construct drainage systems yearly. But because water had overtaken major parts of the road, they could not continue this year. Instead, they are creating walkways with cement bags filled with sand.
Chidiebere Eze, who is into door repairs and owns a shop along the road, said that he is not surprised with the abandonment of the project because, according to him, there are similar abandoned projects scattered across the state. He said that his landlord does not bother him and other tenants about rent payments because nothing is moving.
‘They told us when they were leaving this January that they would return to work on the project, but we have not seen them, “he said.
“When they first came in 2022, they took measurements of the road and wrote numbers on the walls of our shops, and we thought they planned to construct the road”.
Nkiruka Iruabanachi sells cooking utensils along the road. She hates to talk about the road project which she alleged was only being used by politicians to collect money and divert into their own pockets. Iruabanachi says she hardly makes sales because customers cannot cross over to her shop.
“Every year, we hear that money has been released, but nothing changes. For two years, we have been suffering, we are tired of talking, all we need is action because we have suffered a lot.”
Abandoned Ebonyi project hurts farmers
Travelling into Ndi Agu Ode – Ndi Agu Aleke, two predominantly agrarian villages in Okposhi Ngbo, a community in Ohaukwu LGA in Ebonyi State famous for cultivating rice, yam and cassava, it is common to see farmlands on both sides of the road.
Apart from being a major contributor to the state’s economy through agriculture, the Ndi Agu Road is one of the shortest routes to Ohaukwu and Izzi local governments headquarters and Abakaliki, the state capital.
Ndi Agu Ode end of the road
But for far too long, farmers in this area have had to spend one hour carrying their crops on their heads to the Okwor Market, – one the busiest in Ngbo – on foot due to the lack of a motorable road. The road constructed over five decades ago had degraded and become unmotorable.
Even education has suffered due to the state of the road as teachers who got posted to the primary and secondary schools located in Ndi Agu Aleke always refuse to resume there considering the cost of transport into the community.
But In 2022, in what looked like a ray of hope, Sydsun Global Services Limited was awarded a contract by AIRBDA for the construction of Flood and Erosion Control Works at Ndi Agu Ode – Ndi Agu Aleke Road. The contractor arrived in the community in December 2023. Listed as directors of the company are Jude Sunday Muofunanya, Cynthia Nneka Ikealugbu and Temple Dimeke.
Project signboard
“When the contractor first arrived, we were happy, they told us that they would provide drainage systems and a good road network to ease our suffering, we thought that we had finally been remembered by the government,” said Pius Aleke, a resident of Ndi Agu Aleke.
According to data on Govspend, the company was paid N17,383,311 on March 26 2024 for the project, four months after it had commenced work.
Aleke says farmlands are often flooded due to the lack of a drainage system
However, rather than begin the construction from Ndi Agu Ode, where the road starts, in line with the description and what it had told residents of the community, the contractor moved to Ndi Agu Alekewhere it graded about a kilometre of the road with one-sided drainage.
Ndi Agu Aleke end of the road
Since then, the project has been abandoned and the road continues to dilapidate due to erosion. A former councillor, Ubochi Augustine, said that the Ogwawo bridge, which links the two villages to other surrounding villages might collapse soon as a result. He said that the leadership of the community had written letters to the state government to draw attention to the imminent collapse of the bridge and the overall state of the road. Yet, nothing has changed.
Augustine says they have raised concern over the impending collapse of the bridge
The incomplete drainage system at the Ndi-Agu Aleke end now makes it easy for farmlands to be flooded and crops destroyed whenever it rains, a situation which residents say is affecting their income.
It has also become increasingly difficult for motorcycles, a popular means of transport, to ply the road which has led to a massive increase of fares. Chukwuma Ituma, a motorcyclist who operates in the community charges as much as N700 from the market to Ndi Agu Ode and N1,000 to Aleke. This should have been N400 and N700 respectively.
“As a result, we have continued to carry our crops on our heads or wheelbarrow to the market, oftentimes, we follow shortcuts. During the rainy season, the road is always flooded, and sometimes, we cannot even leave our houses.
“During the dry season, there is dust everywhere”, Aleke narrated.
A government worker who lives along the Ndi Agu Ode end of the road which was neither graded nor provided with drainage said that each time it rains, his house is often flooded because there is no way for water to pass.
Where the drainage ended abruptly
“Now, we are creating channels to allow water freely flow into the bridge in the community, but our roads are still being flooded because there is only little we can do as a community”, he said.
The project may also be stalling as findings show that Sydsun Global Services Limited also subcontracted it to another company, Precious Joe Nig Ltd, (with Chijioke Agbagbuo Joe and Ngozi Agbagbuo-Chijioke as directors and shareholders). While subcontracting does not violate the procurement law, Vahyala Kwaga, Senior Research and Policy Analyst at Budgit – a Nigerian civil organization said that the money may not be utilised effectively for the project as the main contractor may demand a share.
“The project can even be abandoned as a result,” he said. “These are the kinds of things that should be flagged by the Civil Servants handling procurement but that does not happen,”.
At Suite D3, Mazado Plaza Ali Shettima Mungono Street, beside Berger Sales Yard, Utako, Abuja, FCT Abuja, listed as Precious Joe Nig Ltd’s address, the office was sealed with a court order bordering on failure to pay tenement rate. It was also observed that two different companies, C.D.O Bance Nigeria Limited and Ama Yaro Associates Limited, a Civil Engineering Company occupied the office and not Precious Joe.
Project diverted to another community in Anambra State
For several years, residents of Umuanugo in Ifitedunu, one of the communities in Dunukofia Local government Area of Anambra State have endured the menace of erosion which has flooded houses, destroyed farms and impacted economic activities. Although it has not claimed any life yet, Patrick Ekwenugo, a leader in the community said that some residents have been swept away by massive erosion that often occurs in the area.
Unexecuted erosion project in Umuanugo
“There is no proper drainage system in the community”, he said. The road is often unmotorable. Farmers hardly find motorcycles that can take them to the market, oftentimes, they have to carry their crops and trek long distances before they can get transport”, he added.
In 2017, AIRBDA awarded a contract to help control flood/Erosion in Umuanugo, Ifitedunu to Canpas Resources Consultants & Engineering Limited (with Nnagbo Kene, Nnagbo Uchenna, Nnagbo Chuba and Nnagbo Nneka listed as directors). Available data shows that the company received three different payments amounting to N82m (82,076,299) between 2018 and 2020. Canpas Limited received N43.7m on December 19, 2018, N28.5m on May 28, 2019, and N9.6m on November 20, 2020.
However, when Ripples Nigeria visited the community, there was no trace of the project anywhere. Ekwenugo said that the contractor never showed up until September 2024 when he came and started marking buildings for demolition.
Buildings were just being marked for demolition five years after
“They told us that they will soon come to begin the execution a week later, that is four years after the project was awarded. But we have not seen them. I know about the contract award, but I did not know why it took Canpas this long to come to our community”, he said.
Road diverted to Obieze already being washed away
Unknown to Ekwenugo and other residents, the project had been diverted to Obieze, a different community located about 15 minutes from Umuanugo. Just beside the road leading into Obieze, the project signboard reads “Flood/Erosion Control In Umuanugo, Ifitedunu, Dunukofia Lga, Anambra State,”.
Project signboard mounted in Obieze
Although it was diverted, Canpas Resources did not also complete the project in the new location. The contractor abandoned the project where it was supposed to begin and moved towards the end of the community- where it laid some asphalt, part of which is already washing away- after constructing two incomplete side drainages.
Contractors were not seen at their offices in Abuja
This reporter could not speak with Canpas as the company’s contact was unavailable online. At Block 9 flat 3 no 9 Yenagoa Street Area 3 Garki, Abuja, where Canpas Resources Consultants & Engineering Limited claims to be located, two staffers confirmed that the office was for Avasoft, a tech firm and not Canpas.
Many residents of Obieze-which is also impacted by erosion- are not aware that the project was not originally theirs. Nnamdi Afukwe, one of them said that the last time they saw the contractor was in 2020.
“We don’t know if he will return,” he said ruefully.
With the project not executed in Umuanugo, residents have resorted to self-help, constructing drainages to help deal with the menace of erosion. But their efforts have not yielded much results as they still find it difficult to transport crops from their farms to the market. There are shops on both ends of the road. The owners say they hardly make sales whenever it rains, everyone stays indoors.
AIRBDA and Procurement law violations
Apart from the non-execution of the projects, findings show that procurement laws were routinely violated in the award and execution of the projects. For instance, it was found that some of the companies to whom the projects were awarded failed to comply with basic provisions of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2020, to file up-to-date annual returns with the commission.
Evidence of tax payment is part of the requirements for the award of a contract as provided under section 16 6 (d) of the Public Procurement Act of 2007. These companies include Sydsun Global Servies Limited and Precious Joe Nigeria Limited.
Patrick said the contractor never showed up since the project was awarded
In the Anambra state project, the contractor violated the provisions of the act by diverting the erosion project to a different location.
Akingunola Omoniyi, head of the Network for the Actualisation of Social Growth and Viable Development (NEFGAD), a procurement advocacy group says moving a contract to a different location requires an entirely new procurement process to gain legality.
“The diversion cannot be effected midway or after appropriation by any entity/authority, including the Permanent Secretary of any procuring entity,” he argues.
Reacting to findings by this reporter, Kwaga, said that it is disturbing that fiscal transparency as regards the utilisation of funds and the implementation of public works is not done in a systematic way in Nigeria.
He noted that not having consequences following infractions of Public Finance Management rules also creates instability in the system and signals that actions do not have repercussions.
“And where this is the (dis)order of things; resources, finance and commercial activity would generally be suboptimal,” he said. “We don’t often measure the losses occasioned by the non-execution of projects in naira and kobo that politicians often get away with being irresponsible and the Executive believes it owes no duty to them”.
Unregistered companies
Kwaga however, recommended that specialised agencies handling financial crimes like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) must collaborate with other agencies and institutions such as the Fiscal Responsibility Commission, the Auditor General of the Federation (AuGF) and the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF) to tackle the widespread corruption in the public finance management space optimally.
AIRBDA still waiting for MD’s approval
Aside from the FOIA request, which AIRBAD did not respond to, Ripples Nigeria also contacted an engineer at the agency, John Udemezue, who claims to know about the projects but he said he would not address the issues unless he got clearance from the Managing Director of the agency.
“We are ready with your demands, but it is only the MD’s directive that can make us hand such a serious official document to an outsider,” he said.
“If there are challenges that our benefitting communities are facing, we will not shy away from addressing them because that is our mandate, we are not doing shoddy jobs. Whatever you see us doing is to the best of our knowledge and technical capability and the funding for the respective projects,”.
Iroegbu had claimed that the agency has a monitoring team that usually goes to project locations to check if what has been done is in line with the project specification because the government would want to see all the evidence before they can make payment.
However, if the agency did its monitoring well, it would have seen that one of the projects was taken to a different community.
By: Arinze Chijioke
This investigation is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the International Centre for Investigative Reporting.