The Nigerian government says the Niger Second Bridge the connection of the Southeast and South-South states is now 91 percent complete.
The Minister for Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, revealed this on Thursday during the weekly ministerial briefing at the State House, Abuja.
He said the bridge, billed for completion in February 2022, was delayed due to the COVID-19 shutdown and EndSARS protests.
The briefing was to enable him to provide further updates on the key collaborations between the federal and state governments in implementing some of the major reforms being executed by the ministry and the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF).
He listed the second bridge over Niger, Lagos-Ibadan and the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria highways as the main projects being executed through the PIDF. He said two of the projects would be completed this year, while the Abuja-Kano highway would be completed next year.
“The Lagos-Ibadan expressway will be delivered this year, subject to how we navigate the pricing issues. Niger’s second bridge also this year, while the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano highway mainline is scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2023 before the president leaves office at the end of his term.”
He said that the road from Abuja to Kano has ancillary works that cannot be finished next year.
“There are auxiliary jobs that cannot be finished next year; the service lanes and truck parks, toll plazas, but that will continue because the funding is structured properly and the NSI is trying to mobilize some private capital now into the project,” he said.
Jobs
According to the Minister of Works, thousands of jobs have been created with the execution of the three projects.
“The three projects have been capable of generating a total of 5,246 direct jobs and 13,998 indirect jobs. This is an important link in the economic agenda of this country because at this moment people have something to do. If you look at the GDP results by sector, you’ll see that mining is thriving, you’ll see that the construction sector is booming, you’ll see that petroleum products are booming too, this is part of the reason.
“And then you see that the food vendors also make money because on every construction site, people have to eat twice a day. A plate of food used to cost N250 before the cost of living started to rise.
“This is an important economic engine. We focus more on roads, but you will see the millions or hundreds of thousands of tons of cement that are produced in the cement industry, where they are now working at full steam and many people are employed there.
“Each of these projects has a bank guarantee for the money they receive and those guarantees are not given for free. The contracts also have a 7.5 percent Value Added Tax, which when collected, 85 percent goes to the States,” he said.
Buhari Priority
The minister said that the three projects were chosen based on President Buhari’s priority.
“When I was appointed minister for the first time, a week after I was sworn in as minister in 2015, I received an invitation from the Villa that the president wanted to see me. Arriving at his office he told me; Ilorin-Jebba, do you know what’s going on there? I said no, then he asked me to visit him and solve the problem. For 2nd Niger Bridge, ‘I want a short summary of what’s going on there, it’s a priority for me, I want to do it.’
“He also said ‘Lagos-Ibadan, why has it taken so long? You are from Lagos. I want a summary and I want a solution to that path. These are my priorities. Just go and give Nigerians good roads.’ So the projects were the president’s directive. In the process, Abuja-Kano began to deteriorate and added to our plate. So these are directives and presidential mandates,” said the minister.
Honorable Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, SAN during the launch of the Web Portal for the sale of National Housing Program (NHP) completed houses for Nigerians at the Ministry of Works and Housing, Headquarters, Mabushi, Abuja on Friday November 12, 2021.
Mr. Fashola estimated the cost of three major PIDF projects at 1.3 trillion naira: Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Expressway (375 km): 797 billion naira; Niger Second Bridge (11.59 km): 206 billion naira and Lagos-Ibadan Highway (127 km): 310 billion naira.
The minister also referred to the challenges facing the government in the execution of the three projects.
“On the second Niger bridge, one of the challenges we face on the Anambra side of the project is the stay-at-home order on Mondays and every day we don’t work there is time lost.
“On the second bridge in Niger, we are going to cut off the power supply to one of the power plants for maintenance. On the Abuja-Kano highway, we have to relocate the transmission lines; we have to move the people who have set up markets along the highways and so on. These are some of the challenges that we face and then there are the compensation issues and we are working with the governors, who control the land in their states to help us overcome these local issues,” he said.
Speed limit
At the event, Mr. Fashola also warned motorists not to exceed 100 km/h on finished roads to avoid accidents.
He said the warning became necessary when he received messages from some road users praising the quality of the work done, saying they were going 150 km/h due to the smoothness of the roads.
He also denounced the sale of gasoline and other petroleum products on the roads, saying that they deteriorate the roads faster.
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The PIDF began in 2017 as a response to the insufficiency of the annual national allocation to meet the government’s capital and infrastructure commitments.
The Fund is made up of investment returns such as dividends from Nigeria’s liquefied natural gas program, as well as looted funds recovered by the government, which are reinvested in infrastructure development.