Nigeria’s minister of works and housing, Babatunde Fashola says the country needs half a trillion naira per year for three years to develop its roads network.
Fashola gave this figure while addressing the press corps of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in Abuja on Monday.
The minister seems to lay some blame on past administrations whom he chastised for not showing as much commitment, quote, “as the president Muhammadu Buhari government.” He said if those past governments had shown such commitment, most of the thirty-five thousand kilometers of the country’s roads would have now been completed.
Fashola said the current administration inherited many roads, some dating back to 2006, and some older. He said the country was earning more from oil, at one hundred dollars per barrel, and the nation’s total budget was four trillion naira. Now, with forty dollars per barrel, Fashola said the country’s budget is thirteen trillion naira.
The minister said there are currently more than seven hundred contracts working on constructing or rehabilitating more than thirteen thousand kilometers out of the nation’s thirty-five thousand kilometers of roads.
