The Steering Committee on Ebonyi State Ring Road projects has ordered the arrest of defaulting contractors, consultants, and some members of the State Projects Implementation Units (SPIU) over an alleged conspiracy to defraud the state government.
The Chairman of the Steering Committee, Engr. Stanley Lebechi Mbam, who is also the Commissioner for Works, gave the directive during a review meeting to appraise contractors’ compliance with the committee’s resolutions and action plan. He said contractors who abandoned their projects had been ordered to return to site without further delay.
Expressing dismay over the situation, Engr. Mbam condemned the “nonchalant and fraudulent” attitude of the contractors, accusing them of manipulations, non-compliance, and conspiracy despite Governor Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru’s repeated warnings on prudent resource management and strict adherence to contractual obligations.
He recalled that during an earlier project review meeting, the governor had expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of some contractors whose work on the ground did not justify the payments they had already received. The governor subsequently directed them to mobilize back to their project sites immediately.
However, at Friday’s meeting, the Steering Committee noted a “total absence of compliance” and uncovered evidence of gross conspiracy among contractors, consultants, and certain SPIU officials. Their alleged misconduct, according to the committee, includes inflating payments, reckless project abandonment, deliberate delays in execution, and outright misappropriation.
The committee also decried a situation where consultants were engaged in place of project engineers, stressing that the statutory role of project engineers—civil servants who are directly accountable and bound by service regulations could not be substituted without compromising accountability.
It further warned contractors who may have received unapproved funds to refund the money to the state government or face the full weight of the law.
Meanwhile, representatives of some of the indicted contractors including Kakatar CE Limited, Marco Kings Engineering Limited along with a consultant and some SPIU members, are currently assisting the police in investigations aimed at unraveling the fraud.
