President Muhammadu Buhari may seek other ways of funding road projects across the country outside the national budget.
This was one of the points of the
briefing made by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Works, Mr. Dauda
Kigbu, to the President at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Thursday.
Kigbu said he used the opportunity of
the briefing to put Buhari through all the ministry’s major projects
across the country and stressed the need for seeking other windows to
fund road projects.
He said, “I took the President through
the activities of the Ministry of Works. As you may be aware, 90 per
cent of the ministry’s mandate is mainly on roads.
“I went through all the major projects
across the country and I emphasised the need of seeking other windows of
funding outside of the national budget.
“Particularly,
I talked about looking at the Public-Private Partnership model as well
as looking at various supports like multilateral supports from agencies
such as the World Bank, African Development Bank and similar bodies.”
Kigbu said the President promised to look into the suggestion because of the obvious benefits in it.
“The President is committed to
developing this country and he is passionate about roads because roads
are central to national development.
“He confirmed that he will look into the
suggestion because if you look at the multilateral support, for
example, it always has some moratorium period, a reasonable period for
repayment and the interest charged is almost one per cent,” he said.
Kigbu listed ongoing projects being
carried out by the ministry to include the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway;
Enugu-Port Harcourt Road and Mokwa-Bida Road among others.
He also said preliminary works were ongoing on the site of the second Niger Bridge.
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