Rather than procuring the works as a single project, the contracts were divided into Sections I, II and III and awarded to Stoneworks Global Investments Ltd and Agelink Network Limited.
A SaharaReporters review of the public payments portal, GovSpend, has shown that the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) awarded three contracts worth a combined ₦1.278 billion for the maintenance and rehabilitation of roads at the David Umahi Federal University of Medical Sciences, Uburu, Ebonyi State, to two companies linked to the same beneficial owner, raising fresh concerns over suspected contract splitting.
The Federal Road Maintenance Agency is under the Ministry of Works in Nigeria.
Contract splitting generally refers to the fragmentation of a procurement requirement into multiple smaller contracts that could reasonably have been procured as a single project, particularly where such division has the effect of avoiding statutory approval limits, competitive bidding requirements or other procurement safeguards.
An examination of FERMA's payment records reveals that on February 24, 2025, the agency approved three separate contracts covering virtually identical works at the same project location.
