How Fashola ‘Closed’ Federal Road Deficit By ‘36%’

After serving for two terms of eight years, as the minister of Works and Housing, the Minister of Power Works and Housing Babatunde Raji Fashola has said that he and the team with whom he worked at the ministry are leaving a system that would make the future sets of leadership in the ministry, work easier.

Post-May 29, Nigerians would assess the Fashola service at the Ministry of Works and Housing viz-a-viz the implementation of interventions on federal road policies with particular focus on roads that are critical to economic and social development.

Out of the over 36,000 kilometres of federal road for which he has overseen the development, the Fashola administration said 13,000 of such federal roads have been touched in one way or the other. Leaving about 26,000 plus road networks that would need similar touch by the incoming administration.

Insight into the work achieved with the various budget for which he has made ninety-one visits the National Assembly on accountability missions are roads, bridges, houses, signages, and the linear meter of lane markings.

Various innovations were adopted and implemented to reach over 60% of the federal road challenges that have either been repaired, rehabilitated, or completed. These measures which attracted the SUKUK, NNPC and advanced Cooperate Tax Funds pooled resources to meet the challenges in the sector.

The ninety-one visits to the National Assembly were to request and defend seven budget cycles, of these varied innovations that would up the budgetary allocations and access to funds beyond the amount inherited from the PDP administration that could not meet the Progressives ideology of development.

“The 2015 budget was N18bn for the whole of Nigeria, so Lagos Abeokuta road at that time was estimated to cost about N55bn to N56bn. There was only N18bn for the whole of Nigeria.

“The progressive Ideal could not tolerate that, and now carried out an expansionary fiscal policy from N18bn to N264bn in the very first year. That is way far an ideological difference, and when we talk of the change during our campaign, that is something that changed,” the outgoing Minister said at a briefing on the tour of duty as Honourable Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

 Records available to Nigerian Tribune, sourced from the respective National Budget from 2017 -2021 a Cumulative of N764,211,865,409 on road all of which performed above 70% on average.

This exclusive of the SUKUK, NNPC and Represented over 54.4% of the resources mobilized by the All Progressives Congress federal government to reduce the road deficit in the country by 36% in eight years.

The minister noted that, while it started out with an unprogressive budget of N18bn it raised the budget, in the first budgetary cycle of the Progressives government fiscal year to N212bn and progressively did so to the current N531,657,827,662 out of which the road Infrastructure, had a share of N165,864,403,197 in 2022.

In the current transition budget, the ministry has an allocation of N288,477,227,865 for its capital expenditure from which it would expend N216,381,230,610 for Construction/provision as captured in its budget code for 2023 appropriation Act, 2302.

In the housing sector, eleven sites translating to 3,198 units of houses are left for completion for the National Housing programme. The ambitious programme got 46 sites across the federation from states for development of 6,068 from which 35 sites including FCT have 2,870 housing units completed.

Its legacy project, which is the 2nd Niger Bridge has reached near completion and was used during the holiday. Fashola has been severally quoted as saying that the bridge would be completed by 15 of May an indication that the project would be delivered by this administration.

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