Years have passed with no end in sight for one of the most significant road construction projects of the federal government in Osun State; the longer the delay, the higher the cost.

An interstate route that is 30.2 km long and belongs to the federal government connects Gbongan, Iwo, and Oyo. The federal government authorised the road’s repair in 2011, during the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. Other federal roads approved for rehabilitation at the same time were Jalingo-Kuna-Lau road in Taraba State, Ijebu-Igbo-Olomi road in Ogun State, Ondo-Ore road in Ondo State, Odo-Oba-Takie-Gambari-Otte on Ibadan-Oyo-Ogbomoso-Ilorin road, and Onitsha-Owerri expressway down to Okija in Anambra and Imo states. The 15-kilometre interstate road from Aiyegunle in Ondo State to Akoko in Edo State was approved for construction, according to Mike Onolememen, then Minister of Works, during a press briefing held immediately after the Federal Executive Council meeting of September 5, 2011.

Thus, the government awarded the contract to Kopek Construction Limited, an engineering and construction company with its headquarters located in Ibadan, Oyo State. Originally known as the Gbongan-Iwo-Oyo road, it links a number of agricultural towns and villages. Over 13 years after receiving approval for reconstruction, the project is still nearly entirely unfinished, though it has received significant funding at various points along the way.

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THE START

After making a down payment, Kopek obtained the 30.2-kilometer road project from the government on August 17, 2011, for a total of N6,917,558,164.4, or more than N230,000,000 million per kilometre, and started construction. However, today, only 7 percent of the road has been completed, with work stopping at Akota village on the Gbongan side, which is part of Osun State’s Ayedaade Local Government area.

Villagers along Gbongan road relayed how excited they were when the contractor commenced work on the road that connected several farming communities, including Agba, Osunwoyin, Egbeda, Elesin, Olowu, Alabata, Arunmole, Onigangan, Oloba, Kota and Oke-Osun villages, to cities on both ends. Both sides of the road are adorned with cocoa and plantain farms, attesting to the agrarian nature of the environment and the people’s occupation. It is home to foreign nationals who are in Nigeria to make a living.

“The road had been completely abandoned before the government turned its attention to it. For instance, drivers who were plying this road from Iwo to Gbongan had abandoned it and turned to the longer route from Ileogbo to Gbongan,” said Olusina Phillips, a farmer in Oloba village. “It became difficult for people to easily take their farm outputs to the market. With that situation, you can imagine how happy we were when the contractor started working.”

While the idea of providing the infrastructure was relieving, the villagers’ excitement faded when the construction firm stopped, leaving some of its equipment to the whims of weeds, animals, and probably vandals. While buses have returned to the road, the experience has been one of uglyness and pain for passengers and other road users. In 2015, Jonathan handed over to former President Muhammadu Buhari, appearing to have constituted a political impediment to the flow of work, as is often the case in the country. Two years into Buhari’s government, Kopek returned to the site. But the work soon stopped, further adding to its history of delays and cost escalation.

BILLIONS WITHOUT RESULTS

Raji Fashola, Nigeria’s immediate-past minister of works and housing, disclosed on March 2, 2018, that the government had spent N2.8 billion on the construction and promised to complete it. Fashola said this through Adetunji Adeoye, the southwest director at the Federal Ministry of Works at the time.

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Beyond the regular allocations in several annual budgets, FIJ’s findings showed some interesting patterns. The road has been featured as two different line items in the budgets of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing at least once. Following the construction approval, the government appropriated N594 million to the project in the 2012 capital expenditure budget of the Ministry of Works.

In the 2013 budget, the road was described under line item 23020105 as “reconstruction/rehabilitation of Gbongan-Iwo-Oyo road, Oyo State”. The sum of N150 million was earmarked for it in the Ministry of Water Resources’ budget. The budget of 2014 also allocated N473 million for the reconstruction of the road. But this time, under the purview of the Ministry of Works and Housing.

In 2017, the same road received double allocations. First, N20 million was allocated for the rehabilitation of the Awe-Iwo federal road, Oyo State. This is a section of the road on the Iwo side. On the Iwo side, the Gbongan-Iwo-Oyo road links several villages, including Idi-Iroko, Adana, Pereseke, Oloogun-Ebi villages and Awe town. According to villagers, no work was done on the said section in 2017.

Secondly, another provision for the same road existed in the same 2017 budget of the Ministry of Works as item FMOWP60148478 with an allocation of N360 million.

Of the N2,853,800,858.19 the government stated had been paid to the contractor, FIJ found only N1,597,000,000 captured in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2017 budgets. It is also worthy of mention that available data as of 2017 showed that the government had a balance of N2,496,367,233.47 to pay the contractor.

THE MONEY TRAIL

In tracking the release of funds to the contractors handling the road, FIJ consulted govspeng.ng, a public accountability platform managed by BugdIT. The data obtained from the platform indicated that funds were released to Kopek at various times between 2021 and 2022, while Accurate International Limited received funds as recently as November 2023.

Between March and May 2021, Kopek received N174,522,702 and N134,389,534 at different times. Twice in October, it got N53,860,465.12 and N20,646,511.63, all from the Ministry of Works and Housing.

FIJ also found that Accurate International Limited, a company with no digital footprint, collected N48,790,829.42 in November, meant for the general maintenance of the same road.

Overall, available records revealed that the two contractors collected N432,210,062.17 from the federal government in respect of the road between 2021 and 2023.

THE WORK DONE

Since the commencement of the reconstruction 13 years ago, only the section of the road from Alape Junction in Gbongan down to some metres after Olota village has been done by Kopek. The journey beyond that section lands road users on dusty or turbid surfaces, depending on the season of the year. Regardless of the dustiness or turbidity, another feature of the road is the hundreds of portholes vehicles fight with during a commute.

The rest of the road through Oke-Osun, Oluponna in Ayedire Local Government and Iwo in Iwo Local Government, both in Osun State, to Awe in Afijio Local Government area of Oyo State remains in a bad state. It gets worse in Oluponna. According to Akibu Olayinka, an okada rider, a portion of the road in Oluponna is usually impassable during rainy seasons.

“The part shortly after Olupo’s palace to Anwar-ul Islam Grammar School, near Bowen University, is worse during rainy seasons. That section retains rainwater for as long as the season lasts, making it impossible for anyone to go through it. So, you have to go through the longer route in the Oluponna community. It has been like that for years,” the motorcyclist said.

Aside from farmers whose farm outputs often get destroyed when they are unable to find a vehicle to convey them to city markets or pay extra costs, roadside traders on the uncompleted part of the road are particularly hit during harmattan seasons. There are both health and economic costs to the delays in constructing the road.

A food vendor in Alaya, Oluponna, told FIJ that she had been to a hospital recently, where a nurse specifically asked if she was a construction worker or worked in a dusty environment. “I felt sick recently and visited a hospital. You wouldn’t believe the nurse on duty asked if I was a labourer at a construction site. She said I was inhaling too much dust. She advised that I use a nose mask,” said Oluponna.

As earlier mentioned, Accurate International Limited was recently engaged for the general maintenance of the road. It is unclear whether the contract covered the entire length of the road from Gbongan to Oyo, but a signpost as well as payment data FIJ obtained described the contract as “general maintenance of Gbongan-Iwo-Oyo S/B in Osun State”. This means the company was engaged to carry out a general maintenance of the road from Gbongan to Oyo.

What is disturbing, however, is that the company only worked on the section of the road starting from the Kaara area in Iwo to somewhere around Ajayi Crowther University’s faculty of agriculture in Awe. FIJ found that the company only worked selectively on some isolated portions of the road.

In Oke-Oba, it asphalted one side of the road and laid ballasts on the other side. Even the asphalt on the said section now shows some signs of damage, strongly indicating that the company only did substandard work.

According to Chief Emmanuel Alabi Oyewole, the Baale of Adana village, the road contractor left sometime in 2021 after they had graded some sections and laid asphalt on some. “I think they left in 2021, and we have not seen them since then. You can see the substandard work they did. Of course, the little maintenance they did opened up the road, but it was poor, and they did not finish it,” he said.

On December 14, this newspaper observed some workers from the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) rebuilding a damaged bridge on the road in Awe. This appears to be the latest engineering work on that section of the road.

FG’S LIES EXPOSED

FIJ found that the Jonathan government claimed before leaving office that it completed the road. In a speech by Onolememen, titled “Presentation by the Honourable Minister of Works, Arc. Mike Onolememen, FNIA; FNIM; FNSE at the Third Year Ministerial Press Briefing on the Achievements of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR, Administration in the Transformation of Road Sector in Nigeria on September 19, 2014 in Abuja,” he listed 62 roads supposedly completed at the time.

The listed roads can be found between pages 5 and 9. Number 18 on the list is the subject of this report. The former minister stated the “completion of the construction/rehabilitation of Gbongan-Iwo road in Oyo State” as one of the achievements of the Jonathan government.

While that was a lie, the ex-minister obviously lacked information about the state Gbongan or Iwo is located when he said “Gbongan-Iwo road in Oyo State”. It was the same minister who announced the approval of the project in 2011, when the then federal government gave its nod, and said it would be completed in March 2013.

In 2017, the Buhari government said that the construction had reached 56.68 percent completion. This might be another lie told by the federal government about the construction because Gbongan-Iwo is estimated to be about 26 kilometres. From FIJ’s visit, the entire section already asphalted by the contractor represents less than 10 percent.

Apart from the fact that the road remains a source of economic loss and public health damage, the efforts of successive federal lawmakers from the Ayedire/Iwo/Ola-Ola-Oluwa Federal Constituency and the Osun West Senatorial District have not led to any substantial success on the road. Between 2011 and 2023, the federal constituency has produced three House of Representatives members, all of whom have sponsored motions aimed at mandating the government to complete the road to no effect.

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FIJ could not reach Accurate International Limited for comments, as it has no digital footprint. None of the directors stated in its management information with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) also has a digital presence.

Also, Kopek Construction Limited has not responded to an enquiry sent via the ‘contact us’ form on its website on December 18.

An email by FIJ to the Ministry of Works and Housing on December 18 had also not been responded to as of press time. Meanwhile, Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State stated on December 16 in Iwo that his government was working to get the federal government to revisit the road.

Despite seeking a deadline extension to complete the project in March 2017, the contractor has not completed the project, even though some of his earth-moving equipment remains where they were camped in Oke-Osun, Oluponna.