INVESTIGATION: South-East communities suffer, as AIRBDA erosion control projects are abandoned

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.