By Chimaobi Nwaiwu

Nnewi—Residents of Alex Offodile Street, GRA, Onitsha, are at daggers drawn with the contractor handling construction of the street for deviating from specifications of the project as given by Anambra State government, which awarded the contract.

The aggrieved residents, led by Chief Pat Okpalaeke, expressed anger that the contractor destroyed the walk ways on the road after allegedly reaching a compromise with some landlords to allow them extend their perimeter walls to the drainage channel on the street.

Addressing newsmen after inspecting the level of destruction on their wall, Chief Okpalaeke, who is also the Chairman and Chief Executive of Jim Pat Aluminum Company, said the contractor left the house walls obstructing the project because the owners settled them and pulled down their own in an attempt to get back the seven feet lost from the offending landlords.

“I want Governor Willie Obiano to come for inspection on this road to see things for himself. How can any reasonable contractor leave untouched the fences that are obstructing the project, to come over to the side where the landlords built according to specification to pull down fences to get what he lost to the terms of space.?

“I have written a petition to the state government through the office of the Commissioner for Works. We want Governor Willie Obiano to come and look at this type of corruption  exhibited by the contractor because we cannot take it, more so when they said they are working according to government specification,” he said.

Project engineer, Mr. Chika Nwatu, denied allegation of bribe and said the walls fell as a result of bad soil on which they were built.

“ When we designed the road, we discovered that the soil was bad so we even stopped using mechanized equipment to dig the soil for the purpose of drainage and started doing it manually but unfortunately the wall collapsed and almost trapped my men,” he said.

Mr. Peter Ikebuaso, who is the counsel to the residents, described the damage as ‘man’s inhumanity to man and the height of corruption in the society.

“It is funny to say they are working according to government specification. Is attaching wall to the gutter government specification?   It is very unfortunate that when government tries to encourage local contractors what we see is this type of corruption.

“It is important that the governor and the Commissioner for Works visit this project site to see if it was actually the specification given for the project, if not in a civilized society the house walls that protruded to the drainage gutter should be pulled down,” he said