Oyo Assembly to issue warrant of arrest on erring contractors, summons education commissioner

The Oyo State House of Assembly on Tuesday vowed to arrest contractors handling projects at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), LAUTECH Teaching Hospital and its outreach in Oyo over their continuous refusal to honour its invitations.
This followed a deliberation on a report submitted by the House Committee on Health which was earlier mandated to carry out the same task.

However, its invitation to the contractors handling the installation of equipment in the hospitals, Swiss Biostadt and Fast Track Technologies were never honoured.
The house after deliberations then inaugurated a special committee to investigate the award of contracts handling various projects both at LAUTECH, LAUTECH Teaching Hospital and its outreach in Oyo.
The committee, which is to be headed by the Deputy Speaker, Hon. Musa Abdulwasi is empowered to issue warrant of arrest on any of the contractors who failed to appear before it if.

Speaker of the house, Hon. Michael Adeyemo while inaugurating the committee noted that the committee’s mandate covers both LAUTECH, Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso and its outreach in Oyo town with a timeline of one month to report back to the House.
The House noted that its concern was to allow the contractors explain the reasons for the delay in completion of the contracts awarded since 2010.
Adeyemo said, “The contractors were invited on five different occasions but have refused to honour the invitations of the this honourable house.

“The contractors collected a huge sum of money but little work was done and their attitude towards the completion of the work is not encouraging

“With this special committee, if there was any need to issue a warrant of arrest on the contractors handling the project the committee should subsequently make a recommendation.”
The lawmakers also on Tuesday invited the state Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Professor Adeniyi Olowofela, Permanent Secretary in the ministry as well as the officials of the board on technical education in the state.
This followed a discussion on the need for the state government to increase the budgetary allocation to the five technical colleges in the state.
The discussion was triggered by a motion by Hon. Muideen Olagunju, (Accord Party) representing Oyo East/Oyo West state constituency, who drew the attention of the house to the need to overhaul vocational and technical education in the state with particular reference to proper funding of government technical colleges.
Olagunju disclosed that technical colleges in the state had been the bedrock of socio-economic development in the state.
“As important as the learning opportunities in the technical colleges appear to be, government seems to be paying scant attention to the provision of qualitative education in the colleges.
“In the Oyo State Appropriation Law 2017 only a paltry sum of N1 million was approved as running gran for the five colleges.
“The executive arms of government in oyo state must also strengthen the curriculum and intensity of vocational or entrepreneurship training currently available in the state’s tertiary institutions such that students undertaking more formal courses can also undertake entrepreneurship training that will make them more employable”