road projects in the South-West in the last
four years, an amount it says is the highest
among the six geopolitical zones.
According to the government, 46.6 per cent of
projects awarded by the present
administration since it took over in 2011 have
been completed and appreciable progress
recorded in others.
The Minister of Works, Mr. Mike Onolememen,
stated this during a radio programme
monitored by our correspondent in Abuja.
He said, "All over the country, the Jonathan
administration has completely changed the
narrative in the road sector.
From the North-
East, where we are investing over N320bn in
road infrastructure, to the North Central
where we are investing about N300bn; the
North-West, where are investing N200bn, the
South-East, where we are investing N345bn;
to the South-West, where we are investing
close to about N350bn; and to the South-
South, where we are investing about N250bn,
the whole country has virtually been turned
into one huge construction site."
Onolememen said the Federal Government had
completed 62 out of the 133 road projects
that it awarded since the beginning of the
present administration.
The minister said, "What is important about all
these projects embarked upon by this
government is that out of the 133 of them
awarded by the Jonathan administration, 62
have already been completed and tremendous
progress has been made on the rest."
He stated that the road sector needed about
N500bn annually to adequately serve its
purpose, but stressed that budgetary
allocations could not meet the requirement.
Onolememen said, "When we set out to
reposition our roads, we noticed a gap in the
funding of road infrastructure in Nigeria. If
you merge our requirement, which was an
average of about N500bn yearly, against the
budgetary provision of about N120bn, it is
clear that we needed to do something quick to
bridge that gap.
"We got thinking and we immediately
embraced the public-private partnership
paradigm and as well looked at other windows
available, like the multilateral agencies, in
order to source virtually interest-free loans
and all that."
No comments:
Post a Comment
I Appreciate your valuable Feedback. So, Please DO NOT SPAM - Spam comments will be deleted immediately.
Don't use brand name in name field and you're not allowed to use links in comments unless it's necessary
Such Comments will be removed immediately.
Thanks,
Kelvin