The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved N56.3 billion for the completion of the Abaji-Koton Karfe section of the Abuja-Lokoja highway.
The Minister of Public Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, revealed this to the correspondents of the House of Representatives at the end of the Council meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari, on Wednesday, in Abuja.
He said the approval was to re-award the contract for the 30-mile stretch of highway due to non-compliance by the old contractor.
He said: “The Ministry of Works and Housing presented two memorandums. The first was for the completion and re-awarding of the 49-kilometre section from Abaji to Koton karfe, which forms part of the Abuja-Lokoja highway.
“It was awarded for N56.175 billion. Hopefully this should facilitate the completion of that critical highway, which began in 2006,” he said.
It also revealed that the council has approved over N250 million of revised costs to complete the Aboto Alfa road, which links Kwara and Oyo states.
“The second memorandum was for contract review of part of the Aboto Alfa-Oyo border road in Kwara.
“The revision was for the sum of N251,530,000 which revised the contract sum from N3,060,000,000 to N3,311,000,000 to allow the contractor to provide drainage to replace unsuitable material and rebuild damaged road shoulders as well as accommodate some variation in price.
“The memorandum was also approved,” he added.
Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development Sadiya Farouq also told correspondents that the Council approved more than N2 billion for the purchase of livestock to boost animal production in Taraba.
She said: “The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development submitted two memorandums.
“One was for the revised estimated total cost for the supply of livestock for Taraba state under the Emergency Agricultural Intervention Program for states affected by conflict and insecurity.
“The approval we got was in the order of two billion, a few million somewhere.”
He added that the Council also approved the National Action Plan against Trafficking in Persons, 2022-2026.
For his part, the Minister of Science and Technology, Ogbonnaya Onurevealed that the council approved the revised science, technology and innovation policy for the country.
According to him, it has become necessary for Nigeria to review its own science policy, in accordance with current developments in science worldwide.
“The memorandum approved today by the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation was essentially a review of the science, technology and innovation policy of our beloved country.
“There have been tremendous advances in science, technology and innovation around the world and this necessitated the need for our science and technology policy that has been in place since 2012, 10 years ago.
“The policy needs to be reviewed so that we can keep pace with new and emerging technologies.
“The main objective is that we use science and technology to improve the standard of living of our citizens and ensure that we have a high quality of life, and this we can achieve if our nation becomes more prosperous and our economy more competitive through world level”. he added she.
The minister argued that the new policy would help Nigeria bridge the gap between itself and the world’s technologically advanced countries.
The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clement Agba, who also informed correspondents that he updated the council on the recent GDP results for the fourth quarter of 2021 published by the National Statistics Office.
He said the result showed a great improvement in the Nigerian economy, which grew by 3.98 percent.
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“Ours was not to seek approval, but to report to the Federal Executive Council on the results recently released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the fourth quarter GDP and also some other indicators of the Nigerian economy.
“According to the report, Nigeria’s GDP grew by 3.98% year-on-year in real terms in the fourth quarter of 2021.
“This shows sustained positive growth for the fifth quarter since the recession witnessed in 2020 when output contracted -6.10% and -3.62% in the second and third quarters of 2020 under the COVID 19 pandemic.
“So this shows an annual growth rate of 3.4% in 2021 compared to -1.92% in 2020, which is the strongest growth recorded so far in seven years from 2015.
“The Council was also informed that the inflation rate decreased year over year for eight months, consecutively from April 2021, but decreased slightly in December 2021, recorded at 15.63%.
“However, headline inflation in January 2022 decreased by 15.60%. Month-on-month, prices increased by 1.47% in January, which was lower compared to December 2021, which registered 1.82%, which means that inflation was reduced month-on-month,” he said.
(YAYA)