Minister for power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, says his ministry has delivered on some of its promises, but there are still challenges to deal with as the ministry marks its third anniversary.
In the third year progress report released Monday, Fashola stated that the ministry had walked its talk, and outlined some achievements under his leadership.
“With regard to power, we have improved on what we met, by increasing generation from 4000MW to 7000MW, transmission from 5000MW to 7000MW and distribution from 2690MW to 5,222MW,” the minister said.
However, some power industry players have challenged these figures.
When in July, Fashola presented these numbers, Sunday Oduntan, executive director, research and advocacy, Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), said the figures were incorrect.
ANED, which is the umbrella body of electricity distribution companies (DisCos), said generation capacity as of January 2015 was 6,421MW and not 4,000MW.
In a recent phone interview with TheCable, Joy Ogaji, executive secretary of Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC), said generation companies had an installed capacity 13,000MW, and 7,500MW was available, while the actual capacity that got to Nigerian homes was 3,968MW.
However, the minister counts on another source, customer experience to validate his claims as reflected in the third year progress report.
“As some citizens recently reported they no longer have to iron all their clothes one week in advance as they previously used to do, because the supply is proving reliable and predictable even if not yet fully stable and uninterrupted,” he said.
READ ALSO: Housing deficit in Nigeria is an urban problem, says Minister
The minister enumerated some projects meant to shore-up generation, which included generation from Kaduna, 215MW; Afam IV 240MW; Kashimbilla 40MW; Gurara 30MW; Dandinkowa 29MW; power for nine universities, 15 markets and two big hydropower plants of 700MW in Zungeru and 3,050MW in Mambilla.
For transmission, he said there were 90 projects nationwide with Apo, Mayo Belwa, Damaturu, Maiduguri, Odogunyan and Ejigbo being recently completed.
“Although there are still people we have not reached, although there are still disruptions from time to time, and although there are still people who also need meters, and we are working to reach them, it is indisputable that we have delivered on incremental power,” he said in the report.
On housing, he counted buildings such as Federal Secretariats in Zamfara, Bayelsa, Nasarawa and Ekiti where public works were being undertaken, and the Zik Mausoleum in Onitsha, which he said was now practically completed.
“Let me also point out that our pilot National Housing Programme has led to a nationwide Housing Construction being undertaken in the 34 states where we have received land,” he said.
The minister claimed that no less than 1,000 people were employed on each site, apart from the staff of the successful contractors. He added that these sites were an ecosystem of human enterprise, where artisans, vendors, suppliers and craftsmen converge to partake of opportunities and contribute to nation building.
“Our parastatals like the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) are also contributing.”
Policies such as the reduction of equity contribution from 5 percent to 0 percent for those seeking mortgage loans of up to N5 million and reduction from 15 percent to 10 percent for those seeking loans over N5 million are helping to ease access to housing.
According the report, the ministry is also tackling the backlog of issuance of consent and Certificates of Occupancy to Federal Government land.
A total of 1,216 applications for Consent to transfer interests in land application and 1,300 Certificates of Occupancy have been approved and signed, respectively, as of October 25, 2018.
Some of these transactions started over a decade ago and those just getting certificates acquired their properties years back but never got a title.
“You will go a long way back in our history to find out when a Federal Government set out such clear objectives and is able to come back to show its progress report,” he said.
Progress report on public works relating to roads and bridges, the minister has claimed confirms that the ministry has fulfilled its promise. “We have recovered the thousands of jobs that were lost to public works. This recovery is the result of an expansive infrastructure spending that saw works budget grow from N18.132b in 2015 to N394b in 2018” he said.
The purported outcome is that there is not one state in Nigeria today where the Federal Government is not executing at least one road project and construction workers are engaged on these sites.
Difficult or abandoned projects like the 2nd Niger Bridge, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and the Bodo-Bonny Bridge have been brought back to life.
Sections of Ilorin-Jebba, Sokoto to Jega, Sokoto-Ilela have been completed, while the progress of works continues nationwide from Jada to Mayo Belwa, Enugu to Port Harcourt, Lagos to Otta, Ikorodu to Shagamu, Benin to Okene, Lokoja to Abuja, Kano to Maiduguri, Abuja – Kaduna, Kano.
