President Muhammadu Buhari may have decided to explore alternative ways of funding road projects across the country outside the national budget.
This indication was one of the high points of the briefing made by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Works, Mr. Dauda Kigbu, to the President at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Thursday.
According to Kigbu, he used the opportunity of the briefing to put Buhari through all the ministry’s major projects across the country and stressed on the need to seek other windows to fund road projects.
He said: “I took the President through the activities of the Ministry of Works. As you may be aware, 90 per cent of the ministry’s mandate is mainly on roads.
“I went through all the major projects across the country and I emphasised the need of seeking other windows of funding outside of the national budget.
“Particularly, I talked about looking at the Public-Private Partnership model as well as looking at various supports like multilateral supports from agencies such as the World Bank, African Development Bank and similar bodies.”
He also said the President promised to look into the suggestion because of the obvious benefits in it.
“The President is committed to developing this country and he is passionate about roads because roads are central to national development.
“He confirmed that he will look into the suggestion because if you look at the multilateral support, for example, it always has some moratorium period, a reasonable period for repayment and the interest charged is almost one per cent,” he said.
The Permanent Secretary listed ongoing projects being carried out by the ministry to include the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway; Enugu-Port Harcourt Road and Mokwa-Bida Road among others. He added that preliminary works were ongoing on the site of the second Niger Bridge.
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