By SUNDAY ABBA, Abuja
The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) has unveiled plans to reconstruct or rehabilitate, as the case may be, 260 roads and eight bridges across the country identified to be desiring urgent intervention to ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians and boost socio-economic activities.
Minister of Works Engr David Umahi who disclosed this while inaugurating four committees for the projects at the ministry’s headquarters in Abuja on Thursday also revealed that the projects are to gulp a total sum of N217 billion.
According to Umahi, in pursuit of quality standards under the Renewed Hope agenda of the President Tinubu-led administration, the committee was being inaugurated to monitor and ensure that the the terms of contract signed by contractors are strictly adhered to.
He said the federal government was giving very serious attention to the road between Benin and Warri and that between Eleme and onne port in the South South, stressing that deadline for delivery of each of the projects to be revisited is 18 months.
He said “let me graciously announce that the ministry contacted Mr President on 260 projects that needs very immediate and quick intervention across the federation
“The projects were from the motions of the national assembly, outcry of the public and compilations from our controllers of our states and the total cost is N217bn.
“We have sent it to Mr president and the national assembly is aware and he has directed that we submit at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) for discussions” he said.
He added that the road infrastructure remains one of the key factors for the revolution of the nation’s commerce, education, security, and power in the country, hence Mr president is very committed to it.
He also disclosed that the President had approved funds for the rehabilitation of the third mainland bridge and “we are writing the Lagos State government to break the good news”, he said.
He lamented that the federal government last week observed several failures on East West road .
“Last week, we had a lot of failures on our East West Road between warri and cross rivers. We had twelve points that totally collapsed and if we have another flood, the entire section may collapse.
“Three bridges totally collapsed and we have to reconstruct all of those roads.
“I will also announce that Mr President has not only approved but released money for immediate attention of these twelve points and three bridges that collapsed on our East-West roads between Warri and Cross Rivers.
“Another intervention approved by the president is the reconstruction of Shendam-Lafia bridge and Enugu bridge that collapsed a week ago and the president has released money for the reconstruction of those two bridges.
“I want to thank the president very highly on behalf of the ministry for this. The projects are being worked upon so that we can allay the fears of our people.
These are life threatening emergencies and we must move very fast to begin on all those roads” he said.
The Minister recalled that he and his team spent 14 hours traveling from Abuja to Benin “and that wasn’t palatable”.
He therefore called for the diversion of the road from Benin city.
“I have spoken to the governor of Edo state and we need to divert the highway and that can be done even if it is one lane. We also identified four sections between benin and warri and the situation was so terrible.
“We witnessed 5 kilometres of continuous trucks that parked and we could not find it easy to pass”.
Speaking on the quality of works, he said “We are mindful of the site conditions of these roads, the water conditions and the boreholes instead of pot holes on these roads.
He said the directors is the ministry met and agreed that a taskforce that would be resident in the various locations of the projects be constituted for efficient supervision.
“They will redesign the road to meet the site situation and article two of the contract we signed that under section 51 of general conditions of contract gives us the permission and legal right to redefine the project which means we can scope the project and quality and we are leveraging on that to save our people from the hardship.
“We will use one foot-thick concrete to rebuild the road. We are already working on the bills to redefine it.
“The roads will be exposed to traffic for 60days then we will put 10cm stone base and 10 cm treated with 5 per cent cement. It is going to be exactly what HiTech is doing on Apapa-Oshodi road.
“Let me add that the Nigerian Union of Journalist should be contacted to provide full transparency on these projects. They will be reporting what is going on site as this will be used as a case study of our new policies and new intention to redefine our road sector.
“The president has given a marching order to fix these roads and we will give our best to fix it. Each project will not last more than 18 months,” Umahi said.
Stressing that all new road projects must be done with concrete technology, he said: “Let me also advise our contractor that no new project under my leadership will be done asphalt. We are doing all our projects on concrete. Let it be known that it is our policy. Any contractor that can’t cope, it is not compulsory.
“On ongoing projects, if you have done 80 per cent, we expect the contractors to complete it without asking for increment. All ongoing project has 6tn funding gap and we can’t increase our projects.
“We will not do any variation of price on asphalt any longer. When I came into office, bitumen was N576,000 per tonnne, today the same product is N1m. I won’t attend FEC meetings asking for variations.
“We are going to do more of committees or task-forces in order to see the completion of most of our ongoing projects.
“Most of our deputy directors see going to be out on the field, and regional director will spend one week on the field every month.
He expressed the hope that contractors would now understand that government is not just insisting that they do away with asphalt on road projects, but that the society is demanding for sustainability and integrity of the work you they are doing.