A non-governmental organisation under the aegis of United Nigerian Youth Forum , has called on security agencies to arrest and prosecute the company, Mathan Nigeria Limited awarded N57 billion naira contract to construct health centres across the country.
UNYF disclosed this while speaking with journalists on Thursday in Kaduna through its Publicity Secretary Ali Muhammad, noting that the contractor abandoned the N57 billion contract.
The youths stated that the contractor failed to build and equip the comprehensive health centres across the nation’s 774 Local Government Areas as contained in the contract.
They lamented that after collecting an initial N37 billion, the contractor failed to execute 70 per cent of the job.
The youths disclosed that the contractor even went to court and secured a variation of N20 billion.
Mathan Nigeria Limited is linked to Senator Athan Achonu, the governorship candidate of Labour Party in the November election.
UNYF alleged that the company’s negligence had resulted to the death of hundreds of expectant mothers who ought to have been safely delivered of their babies at the health facilities, if completed on time.
“Seventeen years after he received payment fully for the execution of the contract, Chief Achonu has not completed the job. In fact, it could be rightly inferred that he abandoned the contract for which he received the initial payment of N37 billion,” UNYF said.
While giving a statistics of the stages of completion of the job in the 774 Local Government Areas in the country, the youths argued that only 30 per cent of the job had been done since the contract was awrded.
UNYF said, “Since 2006 when the contract was awarded for the building and equipping of one health centre in each of the 774 local government areas in the country, only 263 of the 774 health centres have been built and equipped; while 510 health centres are yet to be built, 17 years later. That means 70 per cent of the job has been abandoned.”
They said Mathan hurriedly completed 26 of the 27 health centres in Imo State when Achonu wanted to contest in the election.
The youths, however, appealed to the media not to allow the matter to be swept under the carpet.
The group accused the company of muzzling the 774 local governments from where the money was drawn and asked the security agencies to arrest him.
“We don’t think he is above the law. That is why we are calling on well-meaning Nigerians to call on relevant security agencies to arrest and prosecute this man and his company. No one should be allowed to defraud the government and people of Nigeria for such mind-blowing amount of money and go scot-free,” UNYF said.
The group stated their readiness to shed more light on this “monumental fraud, including testifying in court”.
