Buhari inherited N1.5tn debt on road contracts-Fashola

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola had on Sunday disclosed that the present administration under the leadership of President Buhari, inherited N1.5tn from the previous government. Fashola, who was represented by his Special Adviser, Communications, Mr Hakeem Bello said that, a total number of 206 unconstructed roads was inherited.

 Fashola made it known that, construction of those 206, roads will be prioritized. Stating that mainly roads that have link with Kaduna and KANU will be paid attention to for now. He specified those roads as the Lagos to Ibadan, Lagos to Ilorin and Lagos to Jebba, as they are connected to roads that lead to Kaduna and Kano. 

He gave the reason for their decision as, food, vegetables and livestock are gotten from the North and in respect to that, roads that lead to these area, need to be given urgent attention. He said, "We have to build roads that evacuate our sea and airports; roads that drive our energy for now; roads that go to the tank farms to evacuate fuel from the South to the North;and roads that bring in our feed stock, cattle and vegetables and livestock from the North down to the South. And that is why you see us building from Lagos to Ibadan, to Ilorin, to Jebba to link all the way to Kaduna and Kano, and go on up North. 

And we are doing the same thing trying to connect River Benue through the Loko -Oweto Bridge; Kano-Kaduna, and Kano-Maiduguri. Those are the choices we have made because this is a period of hard choices, trying to do more with less.". Fashola also revealed that, those 206, roads had already been awarded by the previous administration. And looking at the present state of the economy, they are left with no other choice than to prioritize, in order to achieve more. 

 "The total outstanding contractual liabilities are in the region of 1.5tn and this administration is taking them in batches, starting from the crucial heavy traffic highways that evacuate goods from ports, fuel from tank farms and agro-produce across the country," he said. Speaking on the issue of electricity supply, attributed the poor achievement I'm the sector for the past six months to the activities of pipeline vandals. Fashola disclosed that, about 3,000 megawatts have been lost. 

He later added, in recent two weeks, there have been a progress in the generating capacity of the hydropower plants, which has yielded 4,000 megawatts.