A water project financed by the Federal Government in a community in Adamawa State was apparently fully executed, but it had hardly supplied water to the community it was meant for. Regrettably, a completely different project came on stream, which itself failed. ICPC is now in the mix, seeking to make something out of the mess, writes ONIMISI ALAO.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) is investigating how a N109 million constituency water project in Shelleng, headquarters of Shelleng Local Government Area of Adamawa State has failed to supply water to residents as intended.
The water project involves the construction of a borehole at Donge, a threshold community some three kilometres to Shelleng Township, and the piping of the water into Shelleng for use of residents.
The Shelleng Water Project, initiated as a constituency project when Senator Ahmed Barata represented Adamawa South District in the Senate and awarded under the 2016 Federal Appropriation, the project was designed for implementation in two phases at the total cost of N109,752,781.
Three years down the line, the water scheme cuts the curious picture of a project that appears to have been completed at some time but which ceased to be complete not long afterwards.
This was the strange finding when officials of the ICPC visited the project sites earlier in the month, precisely on December 4.
Local sources said water was indeed piped from the borehole site in Donge to the distribution tank in Shelleng from where water got to the Shelleng residents, but that this lasted only a short while.
The sources attributed the short period of water supply regime to the Kiri-Shelleng Road construction project, a project which involved the reconstruction of the road from Kiri, a community in the Shelleng Local Government Area to the LGA headquarters.
Explaining how the Kiri-Shelleng road project endangered the Shelleng water project, the Village Head of Gindi Gamji in whose territory the borehole is located, Malam Audu Bello told the ICPC officials that it was the case of execution of one project hampering the life of another.
He said: “The borehole was linked to Shelleng and the scheme functioned for three months. Then the pipes (laid in the ground and conveying the water to Shelleng) were removed to pave way for the construction of the road.”
Also addressing the ICPC team on the ill-fated Shelleng Water Project, the Secretary of the Shelleng Local Government Transition Committee, Muhammed Musa, said the project was derailed after “some pipes conveying water to the overhead tank in Shelleng were tampered with” when construction labourers were working on the Kiri-Shelleng Road.
The council scribe, like the Village Head of Gindi Gamji, said they heard about some items at both the borehole site in Donge and the distribution site at Shelleng were stolen by unidentified people after the water scheme came unstuck following the removal of the water pipes.
This is about one-and-a-half years ago.
Our correspondent observed that while the water pipes laid along the ground away from the line of the Kiri-Shelleng Road were intact, those lying by the new roadway were, indeed, pulled out as the road construction workers were excavating ground for the new road to take shape.
Most of the excavated pipes were piled up and kept within the premises of the Shelleng LGA Secretariat, while a few which security agents used at a time to obstruct the road opposite the Secretariat for security checks, have remained on the road at least up to the December 4 visit of the ICPC to Shelleng.
So, overall, the Shelleng Water Project as it stands is a story of a costly project requiring only little adjustments to bear fruit but which lies desolate because the little adjustments were not made, or have not been made.
Consequently, the borehole points at Donge: two in number at the borehole site, gush out water daily throughout the month and since the years the project has suffered a setback.
This has been because the setback was followed by pilfering, according to community sources. The equipment which controls the water movement malfunctioned or was stolen, resulting in the ceaseless flow of water from down the well of the borehole.
“Water gushes out continually every day and it has been so for years, some source said.
The borehole site has thus become a community river of sort to which residents, particularly those from the host Donge community, go to fetch water or wash their clothes or bath.
However, the ground tank which was designed to receive the water from the borehole and pass it through the ground pipes into a receiver overhead tank in Shelleng, remains intact, except that over time, the solar panels installed to pump the water from the borehole into the tank, have suffered much rust and breakage and most probably dysfunctional.
So, the Shelleng Water Project which comprises a borehole in Donge from which water was to run into an accompanying ground tank, from which water was to run through pipes along the ground some three kilometers to the receiver overhead tank in Gweila, Shelleng, and finally to homes in Shelleng Township, remains a mirage.
To worsen the reality, the Kiri-Shelleng Road project, blamed for being chiefly responsible for the failure of the Shelleng Water Project (as a result of the excavation of the ground water pipes), has itself become a stalled project.
The tarring of the road which comes some way through Kiri and towards Shelleng, stops abruptly at Donge, exactly at the point the road user veers off the road if going to the water project borehole site.
The rest of the road into Shelleng and along the town remains a dusty patch, abandoned by the contractors for unascertained reason.
Thus, Shelleng has no tarred road and no pipe water.
There is yet another irony: The Shelleng town for which there is no treated water is only some seven kilometres from Kiri, a town where a dam exists to supply 70 per cent water needs of Adamawa State.
The Kiri Dam, which resulted from the damming of the Gongola River at Kiri, is 1.2 kilometres long and 20 metres high, with a water reservoir having capacity of 615 million m3.
Some source has observed that the initiator of the Shelleng Water Project would have done better by channeling water from the expansive Kiri Dam than creating the now comatose Shelleng Water Project with the borehole in Donge as the water source.
Such is the story of the Shelleng Water Project, a story which leaves the ICPC with some work to do in its effort to get the project working again.
The ICPC had observed the state of the Shelleng Water Project during a post-tracking visit that Wednesday, December 4, by a team which comprised a board member of the Commission, Hon Hannatu Mohammed.
It was a follow-up visit after a body of trackers had earlier gone there at the beginning of ICPC’s constituency projects tracking exercise in 12 states across the country, including Adamawa.
The ICPC had, in June, 2019 commenced constituency project tracking in the 12 states “to ensure quality project delivery to constituents by their elected representatives,’ as the ICPC hierarchy in Abuja had explained.
The states for the exercise, under the Constituency Projects Tracking Group (CPTG), are Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kogi, Sokoto, Kano, Imo, Enugu, Lagos, Osun, Akwa Ibom and Edo.
The states were selected two each from the six geopolitical zones.
Following the project tracking earlier in June, the ICPC did its December post-tracking visit to Adamawa State through the team which included an Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Jimoh Suleiman, who explained that the trackers who earlier inspected the Shelleng projecte noted that the project had not achieved its aim of providing water for Shelleng people.
On what the ICPC will do regarding the project, Hon. Hanatu Mohammed said: “We will study its specifications. Whichever ministry or agency or department under which the project was carried out, we will start from there. We will get them to give their own account and then take it from there.”
The ICPC team had maintained that what the Shelleng Water Project suffered was lack of community ownership.
The team reiterated its findings that the community was not consulted when the project was initiated, and they were not in the picture when it ran aground.
The Gindi Gamji Village Head Audu Bello had said: “I didn’t know about the project until it started. Then I went to see it like everyone else.”
The Shelleng Transition Committee Secretary, Muhammed Musa, who said he was an administrative officer in the council when the project began, said the council was not contacted.
He said the project initiator, Senator Ahmed Barata, went about it like most politicians do. “When politicians are bringing projects, they don’t want involvement of the local government. I guess they don’t want us to share the credit,” Musa said.
So, the supposed benefiting community was sidelined. And they remained in the sideline, which the ICPC frowns at.
ICPC’s Hannatu Mohammed said: “This is a project selected by somebody who represented this area as the Senator and was funded by the Federal Government, but it is for the people of this locality. The community should have ignored the politics of it and redeem it for themselves.
“This is what ICPC is saying. We need to embrace ownership culture and begin to own projects that government gives us and protect and maintain them.”
The Shelleng Water Project was executed by Chalim Associates Nigeria Limited, with Federal Ministry of Water Resources as supervising ministry.
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