By Dele Ogbodo
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola on Thursday
said the President Muhammadu Buhari administration inherited about N1.5 trillion liability from contracts awarded on 200 roads from previous administration before 2015.
Fashola who spoke at the 24th National Council on Works in Kebbi, Kebbi State said amount budgeted by the same past administration on capital expenditure and infrastructure barely exceeded 20 percent.
According to him, the result of all this was that by 2015 when the Buhari administration came to power, there were over 200 roads whose contract values were in excess of N2 trillion and for which payments had only cumulated to about N500 billion.
He said: “This is clearly discernible from the annual federal budgets of that era, where the maximum provision for capital expenditure struggled to exceed 20 percent when they seldom went beyond the threshold of 15 percent; and what was ultimately released by way of cash was scarcely ever in excess of 50 percent.”
Mr. Hakeem Bello, Fashola’s Special Adviser on Media, who made the disclosure in a statement on behalf of the minister said the country did not invest the money gotten from oil on infrastructure wisely as did the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Brazil, stressing that it is doubtful that Nigeria got optimum value for those oil incomes between 2007 and 2015.
Fashola said: “In other words, instead of investing our oil receipts in roads, and long-term assets, of infrastructure, we spent the money on recurrent items of expenditure.”
According to him, some of these roads had been awarded for upwards of 10 years, stressing that inadequate budget and funding had delayed their completion. Many sites had been abandoned, workers laid off, equipment grounded, he said.
“This was where the Buhari government picked up. With significantly lower oil incomes, we got the contractors back to site one after the other. We raised the budget size from N4 trillion to N6 trillion in 2016 and increased capital spending to 30%; which was funded by borrowing to finance the deficit.
“Our reality today is that the roads that were awarded 10 years ago and were not funded then have to be funded at today’s prices of money, interest rates, and at today’s prices of cement, iron rod, laterite and labour wages.
“Clearly, we lost not only the value of money not properly invested, we lost value in the cost of doing business without good roads. We lost value in productivity by men and machine that became redundant.” Fashola said.
While the country cannot recover what is lost, he stressed that it must not lose what is ahead; in this regard, adding that his happiness is that the Buhari government is investing wisely and sensibly in the infrastructure that will drive Nigeria’s tomorrow.