Nigeria’s Minister of Works and former Governor Ebonyi State, Dave Umahi has frowned the nation’s budgetary system insisting that it was bad for timely completion of projects.
The Minister who spoke during a courtesy call on the governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, at the governor’s office, Ibadan, yesterday decried an instance where the National Assembly approves the sum of N150 million for a road project that requires the sum of about N10 billion and attaches an unrealistic completion date.
Rather than an inadequate allocation of funds for a project, Umahi said he would prefer an aggregation of funds to face a particular project squarely or allocate a lump sum for a project and phase it over time.
A matter he said he would be taking up with the National Assembly, he said he had to deal with a 2023 budget where the funds approved for a budget were inadequate while the federal government had to deal with the pressure of completion of a project.
While promising a redesign of some of the projects already awarded, he held that he would prefer handling projects whose lifespan does not exceed the tenure of an administration.
He said: ‘Our budgetary system in the country is not very good. There is no way you will have a project of N50 billion, N60 billion and you are not facing it and allocating about N2 billion and putting a completion period that is not realistic. That is not good enough.
Read Also: Roads: No Concrete Layout, No Deal, Umahi Warns Contractors
‘By right, no road project awarded should go beyond the lifespan of that administration. Any road project going beyond four years will attract a lot of variations and fluctuations. I am taking this matter up with the National Assembly.
‘Before me is the 2023 budget where you have a N10 billion project and you put N150 million. I can’t award such a project. We have to sit down and discuss this because when you award it, you put a lot of pressure on the federal government; you tell your story, but the federal government is unable to tell its story. If it is N150 million you can do every year, then we aggregate it to N600 million, by the standard of the federal government, that is, less than a kilometre.
‘So, we award the one kilometre and face it. If it is N10 billion, then we phase it into 10 phases so we can tell our own story at the same time.’
While restating the mid-September completion date for the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Umahi, however, noted that there were interchanges, flyovers, drainages, and access roads that will not be ready until November.
He declared that the Lagos axis of the road, handled by Julius Berger, was about 98 per cent done while the Oyo State axis, handled by RCC, was about 88 per cent done, but assured that work was ongoing.
He noted that the Ogun State government had to deal with issues of paying compensation in some areas where it was to site the interchanges.