The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola hinted that the Federal Government plans to open the historic Second Niger Bridge to the public on or before Christmas this year, thereby ending years of endless wait to travel on that important infrastructure that was conceived many decades ago but left on the drawing board by previous administration.
Fashola gave the hint at a press conference to highlight the achievements of the Buhari administration in the areas of Works and Housing, which was attended by the Ministers of Information and that of the FCT, Mohammed Bello.
Fashola boasted that despite the shortfall in federal revenue arising from a depressed economy and drop in oil revenue, the government has been able to construct and complete at least 8,352.94 kilometres of roads and create no fewer than 339,955 jobs between 2016 and 2022.
The minister also indicated that the rehabilitation of 12 major roads spanning 896.187 kilometres in the country within the same period has resulted in the reduction of travel time by 56.20 percent and added value to the people in the communities where the roads pass through.
Fashola said that the Buhari administration had devised a number of initiatives to draw down funds for the construction of critical road infrastructure in the country and end the suffering of Nigerians on certain roads that were notorious for being in bad shape.
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“In these last seven and half years, the administration has been very resolute in the pursuit of progressivism, which is globally recognized as the improvement of the human condition. Indeed, the Ministry of Works and Housing is present in all the states of the Federation either through a road, bridge, National Housing Programme, federal secretariat or Special Intervention Project.
“If in 2015 the complaint was the neglect or lack of life defining infrastructure across the country and today these infrastructure are being completed or within the finish line; if in 2015 the conversation was on the existence of a large number of abandoned infrastructure and the seeming lack of political will to complete those infrastructure in spite of the availability of resources and today
“The Buhari administration has made these possible in spite of lean resources; if in 2015 such critical infrastructure as the Second Niger Bridge, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Expressway were either totally non-existent or in very deteriorated state and if today the PMB administration has demonstrated that needed political will to break the jinx on our nation’s historically most difficult projects, does it not stand to reason to conclude that the party which formed the Government deserves to continue to deliver to the people of Nigeria these life defining infrastructure. Think about this,” Fashola said.
