The minister of works, power and housing, Babatunde Fashola, stated that no new contract for the construction or rehabilitation of federal roads will be awarded by his ministry. The minister explained the decision by the abundance of the existing uncompleted and unpaid contracts (for 206 roads at about N2 trillion naira) awarded by past administrations.
At the moment the ministry prioritize only those roads that have economic significance such as routes for the evacuation of fuel and food transportation due to the limited resources available.
Commenting on the extremely bad state of some roads the minister accused the previous governments for not fixing them when they have necessary resources for that. He said: “What we have done was first to say that we would not award any new road contract. We would deal with the over 206 roads that have been awarded but not funded for over three years.
Now the budget that we have for the three ministries that I superintend is in the region of N400 plus billion and over 200 billion is dedicated to roads across the country. So that is the deficit that we have to deal with and in making those choices we then have to deal not with roads that necessarily border us but roads that carry the heaviest traffic.”
The council approved the purchase of three transformers of 150 MVA to be installed in sub-stations of Shiroro in Niger, Osogbo in Osun and Kumbotso in Kano as requested by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
“The purpose of the purchase which overrides the cost implication is to continue to reinforce, expand and maintain the existing transmission capacity so that as the progress of our incremental power initiative expands and achieves its purpose, transmission company is able to competently deliver the power,” he concluded.
