The federal government is to complete work on the construction of 2000 kilometres of road across the six geopolitical zones of the country in the 2016 budget, the minister for Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has said.
Fashola said this yesterday during the 2016 budget defence before the Joint Committes on Power, Works and Housing, Development and Regional Planning as well as Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) at the House of Representatives.
He added that another 2000 kilometers would be constructed each in 2017 and 2018, under a 3-year plan.
Fashola informed the join committees that out of the N433 billion proposed for the Ministry, N268 billion was for works sector alone.
The 3-year plan, according to him, is designed in such a way that it will cut across all the geopolitical zones of the country.
One of the committee members however drew the attention of the minister of the N5 billion set aside as consultancy fees for the 2016 works, which he described as huge and needless given the abundance of expertise within the Works Ministry.
Fashola, while responding, acknowledged the huge amount going for consultancy, which he said was one of the things he had challenged when he assumed office.
Fashola agreed that “having a Ministry such as Works and Housing which is manned by professionals ranging from Architects for designs, Engineers (structural, electrical civil, building) and even Surveyors, we can’t be spending huge sums on renting talents that we already have and paying”.
He said with 200 federal roads presently uncompleted, and a total of N2 trillion liability, the Ministry is adopting a new strategy as encapsulated in the 3-year plan.
Chairman of the committee, Hon. Toby Okechukwu wondered if there are plans to diversity revenue sources owing to the dwindling oil prices.
Minister Fashola said there is a plan to return Tollgate on federal roads, stressing that it would help in making the environment viable for private investment.
A number of the committee members raised issues on the need to expand the road construction to their states as well as their constituencies.
Fashola gave a breakdown of the 2015 budget performance to the lawmakers, saying that N18.1 billion out of the allocated N44.9 billion for the works Ministry was released in the year utilised 100 percent according records.