Only N700bn paid for N2.2trn road contracts in 12 years – Fashola

Of the 206 federal road contracts awarded between 2002 and 2014 valued about N2.2 trillion, only about N700 billion was paid by those who were then in power to the various contractors handling them.

Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, stated this at the national council on works meeting, which ended Thursday in Katsina.

In a statement signed by Hakeem Bello, his special adviser on communications, Fashola noted that in the last three years, most, if not all, contractors have not received money for work done.

“The first time most contractors received any payment from government for over 3 years was in June and July this year when the ministry of works paid out N73 billion to some contractors to return to work and re-engage workers who had been laid off,” he said.

This, he lamented, was at the time that our economy was supposedly being coordinated, and when Nigeria was earning more money from crude oil sales.

“Instead of budgeting to fund roads, we are now seeing where the money went. Only N18 billion was budgeted for all federal roads in Nigeria in 2015,” Fashola decried.

He contended that most of the nation’s roads and bridges have not benefitted from routine maintenance for decades and had been deteriorating progressively over the years, and at the time when the country was getting richer and selling oil for $100 per barrel of oil.
According to him, “the roads went bad at the time our government said it preferred infrastructure of the stomach to real infrastructure.”

Fashola also assured that very soon, we will pay some more money as soon as our accounts are credited with the second-quarter release.

The essence, he explained, is that transport infrastructure, such as roads are a fundamental requirement for developing our tourism economy because tourism is about destinations, and if people have difficulty getting to destinations, or it is impossible to do so safely, then tourism will struggle.

Speaking further, the minister expressed that it is not only tourism that will struggle, the larger economy will also struggle to grow with a poor transport infrastructure, as cost of goods and services will rise and will be passed on to  consumers.
“Quite apart from this, human and national integration will be affected if we cannot travel, interact and integrate. We will grow apart instead of growing closer,” he observed.

Fashola also mentioned that Nigeria stands a grave risk of also losing its history if her children cannot travel from Oyo to Kano, or from Katsina to Obudu, and many other beautiful parts of the country.
“This is how important our work is when we set out to build road and bridge. We are actually building the bonds of connectivity of the Nigerian family, we are building relationships that bind us by trade, knowledge and a shared history that leads to understanding and peaceful co-existence,” he concluded.