Agitations, demands may stall 2nd Niger Bridge

The completion of the second Niger Bridge in Onitsha may suffer serious setbacks going by the recent developments. The host communities of the project from both  Anambra and Delta States recently shut down activities at the Julius Berger Construction Company, Bridge Head, Onitsha in Anambra State in protest against what they called a failure of […]

The completion of the second Niger Bridge in Onitsha may suffer serious setbacks going by the recent developments.

The host communities of the project from both  Anambra and Delta States recently shut down activities at the Julius Berger Construction Company, Bridge Head, Onitsha in Anambra State in protest against what they called a failure of the company and its Project Director, Mr. Fredrich Wieser, to keep to the agreement they reached.

The 10 communities accused the director of high handedness, refusal to keep to the local content agreement with them and racism in discharging his duties.

There are five host communities of Anambra State, namely; Onitsha, Obosi, Okpoko, Harbour, Odoekpe, while the other five are from Delta. They include; Oko Amakom, Asaba, Idoko Madu, Power Line, and Okwei.

They said Julius Berger workers are not welcomed in the communities and must leave until the disagreement was resolved. During the protest, they  displayed  placards with various inscriptions such as; “Wieser must go, he is arrogant, ” “The Project Director is a racist, “Project Director does not respect the host communities”, “Host communities are not beggars”, “Julius Berger does not respect the terms of the MoU with host communities”.

While the protest was ongoing, the workers who alleged that they were being subjected to all kinds of ill-treatment by the project director and his foreign counterparts took the advantage and joined in solidarity.

The spokesperson of the communities known as Community Liaison Officer, Mr. Peter Okafor, said the communities want the project director to leave Onitsha and be replaced by somebody who can be approachable and can deal with the communities respectfully.

“Julius Berger and their project director, Mr. Wieser, have been maltreating the communities, they use the project director to deny the communities their rights, the man is unapproachable, and lacks respect for the host communities, he does not respect the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the communities have with them.

“He sacked almost 90 per cent of indigenous workers, both skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers contrary to our local content agreement and has been employing his friends and foreigners, we are supposed to be given contracts like supplying of sand, stones, and other small contracts as contained in the local content agreement, but he has refused to honour the agreement.”

The Liaison Officer for Onitsha Community and Adazi Ogulani of Onitsha,  Dr. Chuma Agbakoba and his Delta State counterpart, Mr. Henry Enebeli, said Wieser must leave for work to continue otherwise work must stop.

“We are not saying that work should stop on the 2nd Niger Bridge, but we are saying that Wieser must leave because he has no regard for the host communities and does not have a manner of approach to the communities and above all, he exhibits racist behaviours and we can no more tolerate that.

“Mr. Wieser is very high handed, there are a lot of benefits given to host communities that the project director is denying us, and other local content agreement we entered with the company which he has been denying us, we want him to be replaced by another person,” he said.

Enebeli on his part, said, “Some of our communities cannot access their homes in Delta State, they have blocked our roads with sand and we have been begging and writing the project director since July to instruct his men to clear the heaps of sand so we can access our communities, but he ignored us, we use canoe to move in our area now.

“We appealed to him, that instead of sacking our people on redundancy because he is saying they are not working because of the rains, he should give them time off so they can start work when the rains are over but he refused.”

Reacting, the Controller, Federal Ministry of Works in Anambra State, Engr. Adeyemo Ajani said the Second Niger Bridge may suffer a serious setback if the government does not urgently intervene in the crisis.

Ajani, who spoke to Daily Trust Saturday in his office, said work had stopped at the site, adding that if there is no quick intervention, it might affect the completion as scheduled.

According to him, work stopped at the site because the host communities are demanding for projects worth N500m while workers are demanding for promotion and increase in allowances.

“In fact, the demands of the host communities are complicated and can only be handled by the federal government,” he said.

The controller also disclosed that the project does not have any issue in terms of funding, but the communities are trying to delay the project’s completion through their agitations and demands.

“Among all the presidential initiative funding projects, the Second Niger Bridge is the only one that has no problem in terms of funding,” he said.

According to Ajani, each community is demanding for projects worth N50m, and by the time it is calculated, it will amount to N500m. “Where can such money come from, even the works tender board cannot approve that kind of money. It is only the government that can address it and that is why we call on the government’s intervention to solve the problem,” he said.

He also disclosed that the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the communities and the contractors are yet to be signed due to the demands.  He urged workers on-site to be patient with the contractors on their demands. Ajani said the workers’ demands are not supposed to create a problem since they are looking into them.

A resident of Onitsha, Chief Uche Onuorah, told Daily Trust Saturday that he was surprised that some people could stop work at the bridge when it is the demand of all south easterners.

According to him, the bridge is one of the things the Southeast is seriously demanding from the government and they are doing it.

He urged the various communities to channel their grievances in such a way that it would not disrupt the work.