2016: Works and Housing in review

President Muhammadu Buhari concluded the process of constituting his cabinet by administering the oath of office on ministers on 11th November 2015. Consequently,  Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola was assigned to head  a newly merged Ministry of Power Works and Housing. In his maiden press briefing tagged “Setting The Agenda,” Fashola said  that the works sector […]

President Muhammadu Buhari concluded the process of constituting his cabinet by administering the oath of office on ministers on 11th November 2015. Consequently,  Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola was assigned to head  a newly merged Ministry of Power Works and Housing.

In his maiden press briefing tagged “Setting The Agenda,” Fashola said  that the works sector of the  ministry responsible for  the construction of roads, bridges, buildings and other similar civil engineering undertakings  inherited about 206 road projects already contracted out; with outstanding completion costs in the region of N1.5 Trillion.

According to him, the works ministry share of the 2016 appropriation was N260 Billion, which was a lot more than the 2015 budget of only N18 Billion that the last administration left, is a drop in the ocean against the liabilities that were outstanding to contractors.

Fashola  lamented that many contractors had not been paid for an average of two to three years before  he took over the as the ministry`s minister, adding that  this has  led to  the stoppage of works, by the contractors, the lay off of workers, and consequently poor condition of many roads.

He said, “ With limited resources against liabilities, with debts already owed, we had to make difficult choices of deciding which of the 206 roads under contract we should start with, and how many.

“Our choices were informed by the realities of our economy and the size of our resources. We resolved that all roads are economic roads but that some were more urgent and more impactful than others. So our choices were determined by roads that carried the heaviest cargo, to allow farmers, businessman, industries and travelers move their goods and themselves across the country in order to drive productive activity.’’

The minister said that contractors had been  re-mobilized back to work on roads across the six  geo-political zones and that  consultants supervising these roads who had  been denied payment for two to three years had been paid. 

This, according to him, has helped to recover lost jobs, and put some money back in circulation, as part of a government strategy out of the present economic recession facing the country.

He said, “Our short-term objectives are to complete uncompleted road contracts, restore motorability back to as many roads as possible, improve journey times and reduce the cost of travel for commuters.

“In the medium to long term, we intend to cover more roads as our resources permit, and increase our maintenance capacity of road assets to ensure that we do not neglect our highways again in the manner we have done over the years to our collective detriment.’’

The first step to roads maintenance, he explained, is to restore the authority of all the states controllers of works,  charge them to take responsibility for all federal roads within their states posting, and to bring up an annual budget that will be submitted to parliament.

This, according to him,  will help to  decentralize authority over road maintenance, vest responsibility on the people who are on ground and closer to the roads so that they can resurface damaged roads, clear over-grown vegetation, enforce axle-load compliance, install signs and lane marking and gradually restore our highways back to contemporary quality.

In   2017 and beyond:

Fashola  said that the ministry has developed proposals for the budget to intervene in critical roads in the six geo-political zones that lead to and from major food producing states based on information supplied by the Ministry of Agriculture. 

On bridges,  he said for decades, almost no attention was paid  to bridges built across the country as though they are indestructible.

 “We are beginning to see erosion, stress, and in some cases failures and near collapse in Kano (Tamburawa), Lagos (Ijora), Kogi (Lokoja) Ogun (Long bridge on Lagos-Ibadan) Kaduna (Jaji) and other places,’’he said.

Fashola said although  works have  started  in a few places, only about N2 Billion  is allocated to the ministry in the 2016 budget on bridges.

“We have nonetheless developed a three year plan to cover 42  bridges that will require about N277 Billion authorization by parliament over the period,’’ he added.

Housing

On housing, he said that the ministry was yet to start constructing houses, but tenders have been considered and over 500 contracts are now ready to be issued for work to start in earnest.

He said that the ministry has received land from 27 states as at 24th October and more are still responding.

He said that designs of one, two and three-bedroom bungalows for the northern states to respond to the cultural, climatic and land use peculiarities have been completed as well as   simple designs of one, two and three bedroom blocks of flats for Southern states also in response to similar peculiarities.

“We have identified inputs like doors, windows, tiles, paint, roofing materials that can be made locally and we have resolved to use only made in Nigeria inputs unless there is no local production capacity. We have done some inventory of quantities of materials needed in order to provide investment information for local manufacturers to position to respond and supply in order to create employment and get factories back to work,’’he said.

2017  and beyond – Housing 

Going forward in 2017, he said, plans are on to build more houses to stimulate jobs and  assess the affordability and the acceptability of houses  designs.

“Thereafter, we plan to industrialize the production of the most affordable and acceptable designs. We will then increase supply using private sector as developers while government will then concentrate on strengthening institutions like the Federal Mortgage Bank to deliver on its core mandate of providing mortgages to working class people to own their homes,”he said.

He expressed optimism  that the housing deficit will not appear that daunting again, because it will be a system that can respond every year, instead of once in a while, to repeat housing construction, delivery and acquisition.

The minister, however said, the number of houses to be delivered will largely be determined by the amount of resources at its disposal, and not by the absence of a workable plan.

Stakeholders’ reactions:

However stakeholders in the built sector scored  low the year under review in terms of  constructions activities which is the hub of the sector.

Bldr. Kunle Awobodu,2nd  Vice president of Nigeria Institute of Building(NIOB) told Daily Trust that  nothing much has been done in the construction sector.

He said that all the Minister of Power, Works and Housing Babatunde Raji Fashola has been doing is more of planning towards elevation of construction sector. 

He said, “No much activities in that area therefore the construction sector workers had been practically denied of serious activities in the building sector. The sector is in comatose so we are just looking forward to the New Year for activities to kick off.”

Also, a developer Kola Omoloye told Daily Trust that the year 2016 is lull in terms of housing construction which he attributed to the economic recession and late passage of national budget.

An Abuja based civil engineer, Vincent Roland said that the year witnessed a lot of job losses  as major construction companies disengaged their workers due to their inability to get government`s  patronage and by extension lack of funds to pay  their workers. He, therefore, called on the federal government to urgently kick start construction projects as it is a way of creating jobs in both formal and informal sector of the economy.