By Obiejesi Kingsley
The Federation of Construction Industry, FOCI, has commended the Federal Government’s plan to award road construction contracts worth N126 billion across the country.
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babtunde Fashola, disclosed yesterday that the Federal Executive Council,FEC, had approved the construction of 12 federal roads at a cost of N126 billion.
Solomon Ogunbusola, President of FOCI who spoke to www.icirnigeria.org on Thursday, said the contracts would help revive the construction industry and generate jobs in the economy.
He expressed confidence that reputable local construction companies would benefit from the award and help give more Nigerians jobs.
While briefing state house reporters after the FEC meeting yesterday, Fashola had also expressed optimism that the award of numerous road construction projects will help the country’s economy to bounce back from its current stagnant state.
He said a total of N126 billion was approved for the construction of 2 roads across the country.
According to the minister, the roads were spread across Kano, Bauchi, Adamawa, Kwara, Gombe, Enugu, Kaduna and Bauchi States, adding that the approval of the contracts would restore confidence to the nation’s construction industry, thereby helping the economy.
He said: “Council considered and approved the award of contracts for 12 roads, one of which is the Dukka Gulu road, in Kano.
“Others are spread across Bauchi, Adamawa, Kwara, Gombe/Adamawa, Kano, Enugu, Kaduna, Bauchi/Gombe.
“The headline figures are in the region of N126 billion but I think that is not the story. The story really is what the award of those contracts will do to the economy. It will restore confidence to the construction industry.
“Contractors who have been owed for two, three years before Mr President was elected are back in various states, they recalled their workers and as they are purchasing gravel, cement, the economy is on its way back with a bend,” the minister said.
Fashola said further: “Every place in all of those states, once we mobilise the contractors, the money is kept in those states.
“Most of the workers who drive the trucks, who fix the roads that you see are indigenes of those states and so, they aggregate to the total output from each of those states to the national productivity and national recovery.”
In a similar development, the FEC also approved a new National Policy which according to the Health Minister, Isaac Adewole, was the third of such policies in the history of the country.
He said the first one for the country was enacted in 1988, while the second was in 2004.
“The title of the policy is promoting the health of Nigerians to accelerate socio-economic development,” the minister explained.
“The process of getting the policy to FEC took some time. We constituted a technical working group, chaired by former Minister of Health, Professor Eyitayo Lambo, to look into the country’s context, the challenges, what went wrong in the past and how we can reposition the health sector.