FG needs over N1trillion to complete 711 ongoing road contracts — Fashola

By Tunde Opalana

In furtherance of the Federal Government’s commitment to providing road Infrastructure across the country, over one trillion naira will be needed to complete 711 ongoing road projects, according to the works minister, Babatunde Fashola, Daily Times gathered.

The government, will, therefore, need to provide at least N500 million annually in the next three years for these projects.

Minister of Works of Housing, Babatunde Fashola gave this indication on Monday while interactive with members of the APC Press Corps in his office.

The said the totality of those contracts are made of 711 different contracts on many roads across the country and the total road network now under construction or rehabilitation is little over 13,000 kilometers in different sttges of repairs out of total federal network of 35,000 kilometers.

The minister, however, clarified mistakes made by people on mixing up of the number of roads under construction and number of contracts.

“People often mistake what I said about 711 contracts to mean roads. No. For example, from Lagos to Ibadan expressway we have one road but two contracts, one with JD, one with RCC. On Benin/Lokoja we have one road but we have five contractors”, he clarified.

Fashola said “I think that a minimum of half a trillion every year over the next two, three years will be a strong support to really advance and complete as many as the 711 contracts”.

To this effect, the minister said he will be presenting a memo at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on behalf of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA).

According to him, FEC is a platform which procurement are processed and approved, because of financial limits to the amount of money, that can be done at the agency level like FERMA.

He said “Let me say as a good example, this week I will be presenting a memo behalf of FERMA at the Federal Executive Council. The reason is because of the amount of money, it’s over a billion naira and this Ministry can’t approve more than N500 million. FERMA as an agency also has approval level. If it exceeds FERMA approval level it comes to the Ministry, if it exceeds the Ministry level it will go to the FEC so what FEC does is not to approve money, but to approve proposals to execute and put in the budget”.

Fashola commended the contribution of the SUKUK to project financing in the country.

He said “it has been very helpful and I will take the SUKUK in terms of amount of money required to finish our roads. We inherited a number of roads and resolved that we are going to complete as many of them as possible.

“Many of those roads started some in 2007, some in 2006, some even older. Unfortunately, the reasons that cannot be imagined at the time the country was earning more revenue up to $ 100 per barrel the total budget for this country was N4 trillion. It’s now that the country is earning less, $40 per barrel that is budgeting N13 trillion. So, really those roads should have been done but they are there. Even the ones done by State Governments were not paid for.

“SUKUK is helping because it helps us to bring investment into the road sector. So we have 44 roads under the SUKUK. Most of the roads are spread across the six geopolitical zones. What is important is that the SUKUK is equally divided across the geopolitical zones but roads length in each zone is not exactly the same so my zone can cover three or four roads while your own can cover only two.

“I hope that provides some clarity to what we do and SUKUK is like some form of PPP and investment to supplement the budget because budget is not enough so we limit to specific roads and most roads that are benefitting from the SUKUK are those roads that we normally have problem with.

“Those are the roads that get into the news, one of them is Lagos- Otta, one of them is Benin- Okene- Lokoja- Auchi- Ekpoma. Another area is Calabar to Itu, then between Adamawa and Gombe, Aba- Port Harcourt area. Those are the roads largely benefited by the SUKUK and few other strategic roads that have very heavy vehicles on them”

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