N/Assembly Withheld Over N650m Road Project Funds – Umahi

• Kazeem Badmus

The Minister of Works, David Umahi on Monday, urged the National Assembly to release over N650m it withheld for some projects across the country.

Umahi noted the projects were almost completed but lack of funds was still keeping the contractors on site.

Osun Defender gathered that the Minister made this known at a press conference in Abuja.

He maintained that the way Nigeria’s budgetary allocation was designed was not encouraging for contractors to complete road projects.

He said release of funds to contractors on an annual basis made road projects linger as in most cases, the contractor accessed little.

He said, “When you give a contractor N150m a year for N600m road project, he’ll pocket it while mobilising to site without doing anything on 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.

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“Nigerians must get value for their taxes, 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,” he said.

The minister noted that 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.”