Reps query Fashola on federal roads

Members of the House of Representatives Committee on Works, on Thursday, queried the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, on even distribution of road projects in the country.

The minister, however, told the committee members that he was working in line with the mandate given to him by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Some members of the committee had complained that road projects in their area were not being attended to, but the minister said despite the complaint, there was no state in the country that one road project or the other was not going on.

According to the minister, the president made it very clear to him that the roads that were of priority to him included: Lagos-Ibadan, Oyo-Ilorin, second Niger bridge, Sango-Ota, Kano-Maiduguri, Enugu-Port-Harcourt, among others.

He added that the president told him that the reason he chose those roads were personal to him.

Fashola further stressed that without those roads being fixed, a large number of the citizens would be cut off from the country, stressing that “if the president has given me that mandate, which does not make me a minister of a part of the country.”

He also told the lawmakers that the challenges being faced by the ministry had to do with indebtedness to contractors, which he said, was hindering progress of work in the road sector.

The chairman of the committee, Honourable Toby Okechukwu, had earlier complained about the amount of money released by the ministry of finance for execution of road projects, saying “we need to have 100 per cent releases as it applied to the works ministry.”