A High Court in Kaduna has ordered the forfeiture of the properties of Kaduna State Road Agency (KADRA) for failure to pay some indigenous contractors.
In her judement, Justice Binta Zubairu ordered the defendants to pay the plaintiffs N254,405,169.50 being the aggregate sum owed by the defendants in respect of drainage work valuation Batch 2 of March 2, 2018.
“The defendant shall pay an interest rate of 10 per cent of the judgment sum from today till the entire judgment sum is fully liquidated,” she ruled.
Counsel to the defendants told journalists after the judgment that the contractors were only paid N623,182.31 leaving the balance of over N254 million unpaid, which necessitated the suit against Kaduna government.
Also, the chairman of the contractors, Aminu Idris, recalled that sometime in 2017, the contractors were engaged in drainage contract in Kaduna, to be paid in three batches.
He said: “The first batch of contractors was paid, while the second batch was paid partly. We have waited for over two years, but payment was not made, and when we demanded our payment, they told us that they had finished paying; hence, our decision to approach the court and the order of attaching their property was given by Justice Zubairu.”
Idris, however, explained that the contractors were only concerned about their payment, adding: “The sum of N623 million was paid in 2017, out of N1.854 billion being the initial amount for the contract.”
He further explained that the refusal of KADRA to pay the contractors “put them into untold hardship.”
Meanwhile, while executing the court order at one of the debtors’ site, the men of the Department of State Security Service (DSS) were cited trying to block the gate of the building, to no avail.
The court order was executed despite the attempt by the DSS to stop it.
