Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Ilorin-Jebba-Mokwa road and others are top on the priority list of 206 roads the Federal Government planned to complete before the end of 2019. According to the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, Federal Government’s focus would be to complete already awarded roads across the country with priority to those carrying heaviest traffic.
The minister disclosed that about 206 roads are currently in this category while fielding questions as guest on the popular Channels Sunrise Daily programme at the weekend. On Lagos-Ibadan Expressway concession crisis, he said it was now the subject of a court case, but remarked that since court’s injunction did not affect government, construction of the road may see the light of the day. Fashola explained further:
“Injunctions have been obtained to stop the arrangement put in place by the last administration to finance the road through the private sector and the injunction was granted by a court in Nigeria, saying that nobody should raise money to finance the development of the road.
“Thankfully, there is no injunction on government building its road yet; I hope there will be none. So, government is hoping to finance the road. It is part of what we put in the budget for this year. But I got a message from the lawyers last night suggesting to me that the action has been dismissed but I haven’t seen the judgment since he said it to me; this was late last night,” he said.
Regretting that his ministry inherited the problems of injunctions and court orders to stop development, the minister declared: “At the end of the day, when it is a contract, the only remedy that the court recognises is damages for breach of contract.”
Fashola described as wrong the practice of the recent past whereby whole capital budget was taken and roads were just lumped together with each road allocated just little fund no matter the extent of rehabilitation such road needed. “The strategy I recommend is that let’s take the roads that carry the heaviest traffic and phase them; take Phase 1 this year finish them or push them to near completion.
Then next year Phase 2, third year, Phase 3 and in each phase let us ensure that at least every geopolitical zone in the country gets something,” he said. According to Fashola, some of the roads are more compelling than others, citing the horrific Ilorin-Jebba Road as a classic case.
He described the road as a lifeline for agricultural products and lots of other supplies from the North to the South. Because of the impassable state of the Ilorin – Jebba- Mokwa Road, the minister said: “There was endless queue of trucks carrying all sorts of things, construction materials, petrol, pipes and so on which got stuck there for days.
The only way I could pass was through a bush path, through an elevated detour. “None of the articulated trucks could pass that; those who did just tipped over and people slept there for days”, adding that although the contract for the 98 kilometre road was awarded, but the contractor wasn’t paid for a year and half and when he was paid the fifteen per cent mobilization fee, they only paid him half of the fifteen per cent.” In his appealing, he urged contractor handling the road “to please go back to site.”
Fashola noted that the contractor stabilised the road significantly, but has yet to put the concrete deck on it, adding that government has not been able to provide the money for him to do that. “The rains are coming, I don’t want that road to deteriorate again back to the condition that it was,” the minister appealed.
He said it was imperative to emphasize the issues to correct the impression that government was complaining about the past adding: “but you can’t assess me without the context of where we were coming from.” He said that although the whole contract sum for the road was N14 billion, the past administration could not pay the contractor.
On whether the funding of the roads would be strictly from the budget, Fashola explained: “Essentially we can do most of those roads because we proposed a budget of N433 billion to parliament for my three ministries and our plan was to use N268 billion for roads, N99 billion for power and N66 billion for housing.”
