By Valentine Amanze, Online Editor
Rehabilitation of Nigerian roads will gulp a whooping N500 billion annually.
The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, who disclosed this, explained that with the amount annualy, in the next three years the government would develop its 35,000 kilometers network of roads, as work continues on 13, 000 kilometers of the network.
Fashola, who spoke in Abuja on Tuesday, insisted that if past administrations had shown a commitment to developing road infrastructure like the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, most of the roads would have been completed.
His words: “I think that a minimum of half a trillion every year over the next two, three years will be a strong support to really advance and complete as many as the 711 contracts.
“Again, people are mistaken what I said about 711 contracts to mean roads. No. For example, from Lagos to Ibadan expressway we have one road but two contracts, one with JD, one with RCC.
“On Benin/Lokoja we have one road but we have five contractors. So, the totality of those contracts are made of 711 different contracts on many roads across the country, and the total road network now under construction or rehabilitation is little over 13,000 kilometers in different stages of repairs out of total Federal network of 35,000 kilometers.”
He explained that the government inherited a number of roads and resolved that they were going to complete as many of them as possible.
Fashola disclosed that construction work on some of the roads started between 2006 and 2007 but for reasons, the roads were not completed at a time that the country was earning more revenues, up to $100 per barrel with a total budget of this country was N4 trillion.
He also blamed the nonchalance of some Nigerians for the rapid decay of roads being constructed by the government.
