On Monday, June 26, 2017, Fashola said it
was sad that the lawmakers could resort to name-calling even without
understanding the facts of the discourse.
He
insisted that there was no subsisting concession agreement on the
Lagos–Ibadan expressway as alleged by the national assembly.
“In
any event, allegations of half-truths are only a flawed response to the
constitutional and developmental issues that have plagued Nigeria from
1999 about how to budget for the critical infrastructure in Nigeria.
“It
shows the conflict between the Executive that wants to build big
federal highways, bridges, power plants, rail and dams on one hand and a
Parliament that wants to do small things.
“The parliament wants to do things like boreholes, health centres, street lights and supplying grinding machines,” he said.
He
explained that what the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission
(ICRC) had was a financing agreement from a consortium of banks, saying
that there was no fallacy or half-truth in the allegation that the
budgets were reduced.
“The
spokespersons admitted this much and now sought to rationalise it by a
concession or financing arrangement that has failed to build the road
since 2006.
“The biggest momentum seen on the road was in 2016,” the minister said.
On the second Niger Bridge, whose 2016 allocation, the lawmakers claimed, was not spent and had to be returned, Fashola said, “this displays very stark and worrisome gaps in knowledge of the spokesperson about the budget process he was addressing.’’
According to him, a budget is just an approval of estimates of expenditure to be financed by cash from the Ministry of Finance.
He said that the Ministry of Finance did not yet release any cash for the 2 Niger Bridge and that no money was returned.
The
minister said that the continuation of early works could not start in
May, 2016 when the budget was passed because of high water level in the
River Niger.
He also dismissed the
allegation that the ministry under him was holding on to projects that
could be funded through Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) as a tissue of
lies.
On the budget for Mambila Power
Project, which was slashed because it contained a whopping N17 billion
for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), the minister said that there
was indeed a “mis-description’’ of the expenditure.
According
to him, what was described as a Budget Head for EIA was actually the
nation’s counterpart funding to the China- EXIM loan to fund the
building of the project.
He said that the information on the budget for Mambilla project was brought to his attention only after it had been slashed.
“As
long as budgets, planned to deliver life-changing infrastructure, are
cut into small pieces, Nigeria will continue to have small projects that
are not life-changing and big projects that have not been completed in
17 years.
“If a project would cost N15 billion and the contractor gets only a fraction of that, then things won’t move.
“Success
should be defined by how many projects an administration is able to
complete or set on the path of irreversible completion and not how many
poorly funded contracts are awarded,” Fashola added.
Fashola
had in a recent interview, complained that the legislators had in
approving the budget, reduced funds for some key projects of his
ministry and allocated the money to some frivolous ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment