Nigeria’s Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, has said that 330 road palliatives and bridge repairs embarked on under his supervision have reached over 95% completion and the performances of the projects will be published in 10 days.
The report of the projects’ performance will include each project’s location, GPS coordinates, the responsible contractor, and the contractor’s contact information, allowing Nigerians to verify progress firsthand.
The minister made this revelation while providing clarity on the government’s funding and progress for critical infrastructure projects during a stakeholder engagement meeting on Sunday. The engagement session, held at the Eko Hotel, Lagos, focused on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project and addressed inquiries about recent budget allocations for road and bridge interventions across the country.
He said, “Somebody questioned, saying that we were given 300 billion in 2023 or 2024. But the fact is that in supplementary budget, Mr President saw the plight of the people when he came on board and he saw that a number of our bridges were in shock and a number of the roads were also cut into two and so they directed the ministry to go round and then bring up the palliatives. So we went round and got 260 projects and about 50 bridges intervention. So, totalling all together about 330. The total money came to about 207 billion and that was in 2023 supplementary budget. What that budget could take was 100 billion. 108 billion was passed to 2024 appropriation, so 100 billion was for 2023 and 108 was for 2024. That is still ongoing. The balance of the 200 billion in that supplementary budget was for the curation of new projects under president Bola Ahmed Tinubu and also to enhance the funding of the existing projects.
“That 330 projects that somebody was talking about, we’re going to be publishing the performances of it in the next 10 days. We have performed over 95% completion, excellent completion. So we’re going to be publishing it, the location, the GPS, the contractor, the phone number of the contractor and Nigerians can go and see. So, we’ve done fairly very well in terms of matching whatever is appropriated with what is on ground.”
Umahi also addressed criticisms regarding certain infrastructure interventions that were not part of the original budget. He explained that the government cannot allocate funds to projects outside of the approved budget unless they qualify as emergencies. Emergency projects are subject to presidential intervention, but the scope of such support remains limited.
The Minister acknowledged the essential role of President Tinubu’s leadership in addressing these unexpected challenges. He noted that the president, in addition to monitoring the public’s concerns through media reports, has been responsive to the needs of affected communities and has taken necessary action based on National Assembly motions and personal observations.
“We’ve done a couple of interventions because I get surprised that our head masters, when they talk about certain interventions. And they know very well that these interventions they are asking us to do, they didn’t have it in the budget. First of all, you can not appropriate any project that is not in the budget unless it’s an emergency one. An emergency one is not in the budget, so it can only be the president that can help but there is a limit to which he can help. But Mr President has helped and intervened in the following projects by reason of the motions of the national assembly and of course the observation of mr. president. Of course he watches the televisions, he sees the newspapers, he listens to the public and he feels their pains and he has come to help.”
Melissa Enoch
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