On Monday, David Umahi, the minister of works, said that the National Assembly had withheld N650 million intended for national road construction.
The improvements were almost finished, but Umahi claims that a lack of funding is keeping the contractors on the job site.
During a news conference, the former governor of Ebonyi State urged the lawmakers to release money.
He added that Nigeria’s budgetary allocation was set up in a way that discourages contractors from finishing road construction.
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The minister pointed out that annual funding releases to contractors caused road construction to drag on as they typically do.
He said, “When you give a contractor N150m a year for N600m road project, he’ll pocket it while mobilising to the site without doing anything on the ground. When confronted, he’ll say he’s yet to get the material he requested for outside the country as the money was not enough.”
He encouraged Nigerians to plant cash crops across road corridors to prevent kidnappings.
Umahi said, “Nigerians must get value for their taxes, the road is everything, where we are having kidnapping is on the spot where roads are bad, we should remove the bushes and plant cash crop, it is ideal and acceptable and we should replicate it in all parts of the country. It’ll remove the kidnappings.”
According to Umahi, projects that have already been awarded would not be required to build roads out of concrete.
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However, despite the fact that concrete roads would endure longer, he stated that contractors would need to guarantee that roads built with asphalt would last up to 30 years.
The Minister added, “We are not stopping asphalt works but it is not possible to be paying the job that we know will not stand for five years. Contractors hide under the funny excuse of overloading for the road not standing long.”
He said the operations of the Federal Road Management Agency would be reviewed to “ensure that any intervention in states would be done with the input of the state government to know the roads with top priority.”
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