By Nnamdi Ojiego

How does one explain a situation where huge amount of public fund was spent to provide critical infrastructures to the citizenry and in the end, what was supposedly meant to alleviate the sufferings of the masses, and ease life, turned out to be death traps to the people?

The reasons are not far fetched. This is what you get when contracts are awarded without due process and executed without complying with world’s best standards. When the expertise of core professionals is overlooked. When professionals are relegated to the background and contracts executed without any known companies. When contracts are seen as “jobs for the boys” and so, the “boys” were doing “anyhow” jobs.

Project monitoring and evaluation is an integral part of governance. It is a systematic and objective assessment of an ongoing or completed project. It is a process that helps improve performance and achieve results.

Its goal is to improve current and future management of outputs, outcomes and impact as well as to determine the relevance and level of achievement of project objectives, development effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability.

It was the lack or absence of monitoring mechanism and the failure of the previous administration to employ the services of professionals in project executions and implementation that littered the State with substandard, badly executed and abandoned projects.

In the previous administration, there was nothing like Bureau for Public Procurement and Price Index, BPPPI, to oversee the award of contracts and ensure that due process was followed. There was also nothing like Bureau for Project Monitoring and Evaluation to monitor government projects and ensure that works were done according to specifications. If these bodies ever existed, then it was only on paper because their impacts were not felt.

Could there be any reason why bridges were built without iron rods, beams, and reinforcements? Most of the projects carried out are lying idle across the lengths and breadths of the State after huge sums of money have been expended on them because they were poorly built.

Some of the projects included the 305 twin storey classroom blocks; twin tunnels along Port Harcourt road, Owerri; Amakohia and Orji Flyover bridges; the Nigerian Police and Nigerian Prisons State headquarters; 27 general hospitals and many other projects that litter every nooks and cranny of the State.

Take, for example, the tunnels and flyover bridges built have reportedly failed integrity test conducted by the Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE) and Council of Registered Engineers of Nigeria (COREN) because the structures were not properly built.

The NSE through its Integrity Test Committee, led by Engr. Kingsley Onwubiko, had in a report presented on August 6, 2019 during the stakeholders meeting between the State Government and the engineers and other building and environmental experts, recommended the dismantling and removal of the traffic tunnels along Port Harcourt Road, Owerri, describing them as dangerous to human use.

It is disheartening, therefore, that none of these projects is serving the purpose they were built for. Most of them are merely white elephant projects that had no direct positive impacts on the people.

This, it is believed, is what His Excellency, the Governor of Imo State, Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha is trying to avoid by putting round pegs in round holes in assembling his Rebuild Imo team. The Governor has consistently reiterated his commitment to ensuring due process, transparency and accountability in governing Imo State.

While making his remarks at the swearing-in ceremony of the Secretary to the State Government, SSG, and his Chief of Staff, CoS, on June 3, 2019, Gov Ihedioha said: “I have said it that we must do things differently. we must abide by due process and the rule of law. I urge you all to buy into it. It is not difficult doing the right thing.”

True to his words, Governor Ihedioha in assembling his Rebuild Imo team has placed credibility and competence above every other factor.

The Governor has also realised that the success or failure of his Rebuild Imo government lies in how well or poorly projects are executed, and as a result, appointed Engr. Dr. Uche Moneke, a tested and trusted project management expert as his Special Adviser to head the all-important Bureau for Project Monitoring and Evaluation.

Dr. Moneke, an accomplished academic, project management specialist, is a respected voice in Quality Management and Control, material management, environmental impact assessment, consulting and administration and a COREN registered Engineer of over 10 years standing.

With her position which is critical and very central in ensuring that government officials and contractors saddled with projects execution do their job diligently, it is no surprise that she has hit the ground running as soon as she was appointed.

She wasted no time in assembling her team of experts including quantity surveyors, civil engineers, architects, town planners, amongst others and has already embarked on projects inspection to some local government areas to ascertain the level of compliance by contractors handling various government projects.

Understanding early enough, the enormous responsibility of her office in ensuring that the Rebuilding Imo government succeeds, Dr Moneke has made it emphatically clear that the government could not afford the contractors to do ‘any-how’ jobs and warned them to comply with world’s best standard as government would not only revoke contracts of erring contractors but would also prosecute them in accordance with the law.

Already, three contractors have been temporarily stopped from further works for various deviations from the scope of projects. Her uncompromising stance in doing the right thing has sent a strong message to contractors that it is no longer business as usual.

No one should be in awe that Dr Moneke is already making positive impacts because this is exactly what His Excellency saw in appointing her. And going by her feasible track records, there’s no cause to worry as she would perform beyond expectations.

Kudos must go to Governor Emeka Ihedioha for reposing great trust in this quintessential achiever, a rare breed educationist and technocrat with unparallel natural wisdom.

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Ojiego is a journalist, writer and public affairs commentator

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