THE Federal Government, Wednesday, said it will need N2 trillion to achieve sustainable road network in the country in 4 years time.
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Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen, said in Abuja that N500billion would be heavily invested on roads annually starting from now till 2018.
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He said, ”There are some arterial roads that are affected by lack of required funds. If you ask me, for us to be able to drive these roads to the level Nigerians want, we need to be investing about N500 billion in road development in the Ministry of Works every year in the next four years.
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Insufficient funds continued to be the major challenge faced by the ministry and this had led to the slow pace of some arterial road projects. It is like you have have maybe N70 to N80 billion to play with.
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“So funding, no doubt, is a limitation, but even within that limitation we are doing our utmost best to ensure that such critical fate section of the federal road are tackled within the little resource that is available to us.”
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Onolememen lamented that the budgetary allocation alone was not enough to stimulate the road development that would sustain the economy of the nation, pointing out that this was why it was mandatory for every country to have a special fund set aside for infrastructural development.
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He said, “That was what the National Development Plans were doing in the post-independent era and that was why they succeeded the way they did.”
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