Fashola Canvasses Completion of On-going Road Projects

• FG owes contractors N420bn

Udora Orizu in Abuja

The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, Wednesday cautioned against starting new road and other projects, until the ongoing ones are completed.

The minister disclosed that the federal government is currently undertaking a total of 854 highway projects costing over N7 trillion.

Fashola, who gave the warning when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Works to defend the ministry’s 2022 budget proposal, said the major challenge to the ministry’s efforts towards the timely completion of projects is insufficient budgetary provision and releases for projects to sustain annual cash-flow requirement levels.

He therefore stated that limited resources should be concentrated on the completion of ongoing projects, as all can’t be done with one budget cycle.

Fashola said: “We appropriate for a very token amount for a project of certain quantum. Now once the award is done, the question of financing becomes a challenge. With the inflation and everything, there must come a time and I think that time is now, Mr Chairman and honourable members, enough of new roads and new projects.

“Let us concentrate our limited resources to complete or progress some of what we have started. In finding the solution, I will be happy, there are a couple of roads in Osun State and we cannot finish all of them in one budget circle. If the parliamentarians from each state can come together and say, this is on priority project for us and decide that let us move our zonal intervention project and say this is what we want to achieve, it is an honest conversation we must have.”

Presenting the ministry’s N450 billion 2022 budget proposal, Fashola said that from the total amount, N382 billion is for capital expenditure, N627 billion is for overhead and N10 billion is for personnel cost.

He said the focus of the 2022 budget is on completion of some priority road projects, especially those on route A1-A9, which leads to ports and major agricultural hubs attracting vehicles carrying heavy goods in the zones.

He also said that the federal government is currently undertaking a total of 854 highway contracts at a total contract sum of N7,430,336,544,574.86.

He explained that the projects are expected to be financed through the Presidential Infrastructure Fund, Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Scheme, the Sovereign Sukuk Fund and Multilateral Loans, among others

While assuring the lawmakers that the ongoing works on the second Niger bridge in the South-east would be completed in 2022, the minister solicited for improved funding of road development from annual budgetary provisions in order to aid the completion of other critical on-going projects.

He said: “The ministry is currently undertaking a total of 854 highway contracts at a total contract sum of N7,430,336,544,574.86 spread over the
six geo-political zones in the country. These are roads and bridges that lead to ports and major agricultural hubs and carry heavy goods vehicles across the six geo-political zones.

“In view of the wide disparity between the actual 2022 indicative cost of execution of highway projects of N1,384,622,535,379.62 and the actual budget envelope of N282,636,433,510.69, the prioritization of funding in the 2022 budget becomes imperative in order to make an appreciable impact.

“Secondly, the ministry has identified some strategic road projects that have already attained some appreciable percentage completion and slated them for completion within the period 2021-2023.”

Reviewing the ministry’s N347 billion 2021 budget performance, Fashola said the ministry had incurred more liabilities as it owes contractors the sum of N420 billion.

According to him, out of the total amount outstanding for payment to contractors for duly certified and approved works as at 20th October, 2021 is the sum of N420,583,705,963.48.

He explained that out of the total amount allocated to the ministry for capital expenditure, N182.97 billion has been so far been released.

He further explained that of the amount released, N114 billion was allocated to the works sector, while the housing sector got N68 billion.

On revenue, the minister disclosed that the ministry generated the sum of N837,399,022.33 from January to August 2021, adding that all the revenue realized have been remitted to the
Consolidated Revenue Account.

Speaking further, Fashola bemoaned the issue of overloading trucks by operators who ply bad roads.

The minister, while lamenting that some truck operators are doing that at the expense of others, called on the government and citizens to rise up as a nation to put an end to it.

His words: “Some people are doing business at the expense of everybody. So what they should carry 60-70 tonnes in three trucks, they are cheating by loading onto one truck and they are destroying our common asset. Let people just do the proper thing; we sought the approval of Mr President after we subscribed to the ECOWAS treaty to start implanting.

“He approved that enforcement should be done from the largest loading point which are the ports and NNPC depots. In some of the ports, we discovered that some of the private sector who are operating the ports have a significant number of their weighing instrument calibrated so we have been working to remedy that.

“We have support from the ports but the operators in the ports are the problem. We also have support from the NNPC but what the NNPC has reported at follow-up meetings as problems to major implementation is that, when the truck load 30,000 litres, they then go outside of the depot and decant into one truck. And you will see totten on many sections of our roads, and you will see it, usually it’s a unit directional thing.

“On the other side when they are coming empty, the road is not damaged. And so we thought that some of the things we are going to do now is that from the port of Lagos, we can reduce that impact by putting in operations, the weighing bridge. So we have rehabilitated it, we are now working with the stakeholders who will be affected to have a start date.”

Earlier in his remarks, the Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Kabiru Abubakar, said to overcome the problems of grossly insufficient budgetary provisions which has been the bane of infrastructural development, there is need to be creative in sourcing funds.

Abubakar called on the ministry and the agencies to come up with creative
and innovative ways to generate income and not to entirely depend on budgetary allocation from the federal government.