By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, yesterday, called for a road maintenance contingency fund in the country.

Fashola made the call while briefing State House correspondents on the outcome of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidentuial Villa, Abuja.

The call came as FEC approved about N89.6 billion worth of contracts for award under the Ministries of Works and Housing as well as Aviation.  The road contracts cut across Cross River and Akwa Ibom states.

He said the contingency fund would come handy to repair failing roads in the country to prolong their lifespan.

Fashola, who said approval was made for the dualisation of the Odukpani-Itu-Ikot Ekpene road at the cost of N79.649 billion, blamed the collapsed of a section of Lokoja-Kabba road on natural causes.

He said: “As we go through the rainy season, this is the context in which to locate the Lokoja-Kabba. It’s a failure caused by nature and age. And, again, an opportunity to share with you what we have. We expect that these things will happen, but we don’t know where it will happen every time.”

While noting that his ministry was often unable to respond to such failures, he called for the setting up of a contingency maintenance fund, which he said should have a sizable amount.

The minister added: “So we’ve been proposing that Nigeria should have an emergency provision in the works budget, but we haven’t been successful enough.

‘’There must be a contingency fund, a sizable sum, because of road failures. Last year, we had a problem like that in Kebbi, where roads were washed away. We couldn’t respond because we didn’t have the resources. But we will lean on FERMA.

“Well, traditionally back in Lagos when I was governor, I think we used to provide about five per cent of our capital expenditure as a contingency fund for emergencies. Something between three and five per cent varies across the world.”

READ ALSO: Fashola: Highway Development Initiative to create 250,000 jobs

Asked to give an update on the 2020 contract award for the Odukpani-Itu-Ikot Ekpene project, Fashola regretted that there had been paucity fund to implement it.

He said: “Okay, first of all, it’s important for us to have a common understanding of the area, that is the rain forest area of Nigeria, mangrove areas, very high water table and rains   in seven, eight months of the year. 

“So, when we awarded the first section, from Odukpani-Itu to Julius Berger in 2016, they could not move to site because of the limited budgetary requisitions.

“So, that slowed down work in that area and they didn’t move to site until 2018. And the second section, which was from Abak to Ikot   Ikot Ekpene was awarded last year, February 2020. We have had to mobilise some Sukuku resources to the area.

“Sometime last year, you might recall that I was there visiting with the governor, I   actually went twice and we focused first on the link road from Alese Ugep area because that was a very bad one.

“We’re still challenged by resources. What we can mobilize there   when you look at the contract amounts is about N54 billion, as you rightly pointed out, we have about N4 billion, N5 billion in the Sukuk. And if you look at   this year’s budget for the whole area, the amount approved by parliament was N100 million.

“So, again, we’re hoping that we can fund this one because we’ve proposed it for this year’s Sukuk. So, these are the challenges  we face.

“We mobilized the contractors. Now is to keep them resourced and financed, so they can do the work, especially during the the forthcoming dry season.

“So, when you see the Minister of Finance talking about the deficit that needs to be financed by borrowing, this is what it is largely deployed. But it’s just not enough because almost all of what was left undone for about two decades we inherited and we ask for the job and we commit to doing it.”

Vanguard News Nigeria