58 soak aways, four wells hamper N1.4b General Hospital extension in Niger

With the discovery of over 58 soak aways and four wells at the muddy site of the ongoing 134-bed capacity neonatal General Hospital extension in Minna, Niger State, the project has suffered a setback.
The Director General in charge of Niger State Public Private Partnership, Alhaji Shehu Kudu Mohammed, made this known while answering questions from newsmen in his office in Minna.
According to Kudu: “The developer has to excavate the land, cover all the soak aways and wells before the proper construction can commence because as it is now, the land is muddy in nature.”
The construction has taken about two months out of the three months moratorium period.
Kudu however promised that the eight months completion period as contained in the Memorandum of Understanding will be achieved despite the un-envisaged challenges that confronted the early take off of the project, adding: “The project is of top priority to the state government because of its concern to the women and children.”
He stated that the developer has not reached the required 36.6 per cent work stage as stipulated in the MOU to enable his agency to direct the bank to release the N500 million irrevocable payment standing order and subsequent N180 million monthly release.
The DG said the agency has the confidence in the developer as the standard of work on the site was satisfactory, pointing that the technical committee will not relent in its job of making sure that the MOU was strictly adhered to.
According to the PPP boss: “The agency was careful in order not to fall in the same line some PPP projects collapsed as a result of lack of supervision and the issue of healthcare of the people of the state can not be politicised.
“The first challenge was that the receiving bank refused to agree with the contents of the ISPO from the issuing bank of the state government and it took some days before the attention of the state government was drown to that and immediately they acted that their banks should issue appropriate ISPO to the receiving bank which was since done.