Lock-Out: Minister of Works, Dave Umahi apologises to protesting workers

Dave Umahi and the workers

The stand off between workers at the Federal Ministry of Works and the Minister, David Umahi has been called off after five hours.

The Minister who finally came out of his office to address the workers said he did not deliberately lock the gate against them, but needed to take the action to arrest their attention

According to Umahi, since assumption of duty, he had noticed a disturbing trend of tardiness with several workers coming to work very late. The Minister said he had engaged the Directors and Human Resources and had communicated that he needs the workers to resume work at 9am. He noted that the directive was probably not communicated.

Umahi said on several occasions since he began preparing documents for the 2024 budget estimates some files were not available because the schedule officers were not yet on their desks. On some other occasions, he was told that some staff had closed at 3pm, which were among the reasons he communicated to the Directors that there is need to instill discipline.

Umahi also explained some of the challenges he had on fixing the roads since he assumed duties. According to him, although several billions of Naira had been paid to contractors for road maintenance, Controllers and Inspectors of Works had failed to do their jobs by allowing contractors get away with failed projects due to lack of proper supervision, leading to the sorry state of most federal roads across the country.

He denied claims by the protesting workers that he has been bashing them in the media, explaining that the system he met on ground cannot guarantee that Nigerians would travel with ease to their various destinations if serious measures are not taken to ensure that the citizens enjoyed the worth of what is sunk into the Ministry. He wondered how a contract of N34 billion would be varied to the tune of N100 billion and yet there is nothing on ground to show for it.

He said, “Let us agree that it’s the future of children. The issue is that where we are going even in 20 years no road project will be completed”. He noted that his desire to change things have led to resistance by some contractors who according to him have declared war against him by going through the press to create a different impression.

Umahi insists, there will be no surrender on his part until the right thing is done. He later apologised to the workers and appealed for their support and for them to also ensure contractors fix the roads using local content.

Earlier, the Minister was locked inside his office by protesting workers who accused him of high handedness. Umahi was said to have prevented workers who came to work late from gaining access to the Ministry.

Labour leaders in the Housing and Works Ministries decided to lock the building, blocking entrance and exit point to prevent the Minister from leaving the office.

They also claimed that Umahi stopped engineers and directors from doing their work, and has been breaking Public Service Rules since his appointment, by bringing in consultants to run the affairs of the Ministry.

A union official, Williams Kudi, told AIT.live that the Minister has refused to grant them audience to express their concerns leading to the protest by the workers.