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| Fashola |
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde
Fashola, has reiterated that the Apapa Area in Lagos is a priority for the
Federal Government under the Ministry’s programme to solve the issue of roads
leading to critical ports in the country.
According to the Minister, who was interacting with
newsmen in Abuja at the weekend, at the end of Day One of the Federal Ministry
of Power Works and Housing’s Retreat, arrangements for the deployment of an
enduring solution on Wharf road.
Fashola who explained that a couple of private
companies had offered to work with government in terms of fixing Wharf Road,
said the design and other requirements for the road were ready adding that what
was left now was to sign a formal Memorandum of Understanding, MOU before
proceeding to the Federal Executive Council for approval.
“I just want to appeal to residents of Apapa, to
people whose livelihood depends on Apapa, that Apapa is one of the priority
roads. We also have Calabar on our radar but one by one there would be an
enduring solution. We’ve done the design, we’ve done everything for Apapa, it is
ready. It is going to be a concrete road, I believe, that will last another 30
years. So we are close to starting work,” Fashola said.
The Minister, who was certain that work would start in
a couple of weeks, pointed out that irrespective of the fact that the companies
is offering to support the project, with their money, there had to be some
transparency and procurement guidelines to be followed because, according to
him, “In government, if you receive a gift, it must have a value and you must
declare that value.”
“So we needed to get certification of all these prices
before we get approval from the Federal Executive Council to allow this to
happen, that is the only delay. But we are very close; we have held two
meetings in the last 10 days with the companies. We have agreed Heads of Agreement.
What is left now is to sign a formal Memorandum of Understanding before which
we can then proceed to Council”, he said.
Fashola also explained that government wanted to be
clear whether what the companies were offering was simply Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) or they wanted a tax refund for what they were offering adding that the
challenge of inadequate budgetary allocation had affected the roads over the
years.
“You will see that the provisions for the budget
funding of Apapa and the Tin Can Island and Mile 2 – Oworonsoki Roads, all of
which evacuate the Port have not been sufficient really to deal with the cost,”
he noted.
Appealing to residents and other users of the road to
exercise a little more patience, Fashola explained further, “The cost that we
are getting from the contractor there is in the region of about N100Billion and
above and the annual budgetary appropriation that is approved for us is about
N7 Billion. And then there are debts that we met”.
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| Apapa road |
The Minister also noted that the problem of the Apapa
area has been compounded by the excess tonnage on the access routes due to the
absence of a rail link which used to take the tonnage off the roads which is
also being looked at.” Apapa has many problems one of which is the excess
tonnage. There used to be a rail link there to evacuate the Port. From the time
we stopped using the rail link and went on to the road, we started degrading
the quality of the road. There is only so much tonnage that you can put onto a
road”, he said.
On the purpose of the Retreat for Directors, Heads of
Departments and Agencies which focussed on “Teamwork for Optimal Productivity”,
the Minister said it was for team building for service delivery adding, “A good
team where members know their strength and weaknesses, know their strong points
and their common purpose is likely to deliver more results in quicker time and
more effectively”.
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