We Have Delivered Visible Achievements — Fashola

Mr Babatunde Fashola, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, says his ministry has delivered visible and qualitative achievements to Nigerians since his appointment in November, 2015.

Fashola said this on Monday in Abuja at a media briefing to give the third year progress report of the ministry under his watch.

He said the ministry had in a statement titled “Setting the Agenda for Delivering Change” in December 2015 set out what it inherited, plan to do and what Nigerians should expect from it.

According to him, as at May 2015, many contractors have stopped work because of payment and many fathers and wives employed by them have been laid off.

He said the possibility to return those who had lost their jobs back to work was the kind of change the ministry promised Nigerians.

Fashola said that the progress report on public sector works relating to roads and bridges had confirmed that the ministry had fulfilled its promise.

He said that the ministry had recovered the thousands of jobs that were lost as a result of an expansive infrastructure spending on works from N18.132 billion in 2015 to N394 billion in 2018.

“The outcome is that there is not one state in Nigeria today where the Federal Government is not executing at least one road project with construction workers engaged on the sites.

“Difficult or abandoned projects like the Second Niger Bridge, Lagos Ibadan Expressway and the Bodo-Bonny Bridge have been brought back to life.

“Sections of Ilorin-Jebba, Sokoto to Jeba, Sokoto-Ilela have been completed, while progress of work continues nationwide.

“Apart from recovered construction jobs and growth in construction sector of the economy, the feedback from road users is that the journey times are reducing on the completed roads,” he said.

According to him, we acknowledge that the work is not finished, but as long as we remain able to finance the projects, I have no doubt that it will get better.

He said that the ministry had extended its intervention on roads to universities to ensure that unattended internal roads were given attention.

The minister said that 14 Federal Universities would benefit from the first phase of the intervention under the 2017 budget adding that more would be accommodated in the 2018 budget.

NAN