The Deputy Speaker House of Representatives, Hon. Usman Bayero Nafada had charged various Committees of the National Assembly whose oversight mandate covers activities of Ministries, Departments and Agencies to redouble their efforts towards ensuring that Companies handling road projects in the country execute them according to contract specifications.

Hon. Nafada handed down the charge (Wednesday April 14, 2010) at a public hearing on a Bill seeking to cause construction firms awarded road contracts in the country to construct, build and maintain such roads for five years before handing them over to government.

The Deputy Speaker frowned at the situation where roads constructed in the country collapse within one year of completion and blamed the lapses on poor construction work occasioned by poor supervision and connivance between the contractors and the MDAs to defraud government.

On the need to amend the existing Act through the Bill which was sponsored by a suspended member of the House, Austine Nwachukwu; the Deputy Speaker said contractors who executed road projects would under the new law (if passed) be obligated to do thorough jobs of Nigerian roads, failing which they would bear the burden of maintaining them for five years after the original contract would have been expired.

In their separate reactions to the proposition, expatriate firms, the representative of the Nigerian Society of Engineers and others expressed their opposition to the bill, while the Minister of Works, Senator Sanusi Daggash described the intentions of the Bill as mere duplication of the existing law.

Senator Daggash made reference to the Federal Road Maintenance Emergency Act, 2004, the Federal Highway Act, the Infrastructure Concessioning Regulatory Commission Act and International treaties which Nigeria was signatory to, and called on stakeholders to apply the use of internal mechanism to check the problem  of poor contract execution in the country.