By Gbadamosi Oladimeji
Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has blamed the coronavirus induced lockdown and ban on interstate movement for the suspension of work on all Federal Government road projects across the country.
Fashola told KAFTANPOST in an exclusive interview on Saturday, that the lockdown made it impossible for the contractors to transport materials from different locations across the states to project sites.
He said the Ministry also had to suspend work on the project in line with government protocol on checking the spread of the virus which necessitated the lockdown.
According to him, “Most of the materials used to construct the road like rocks and laterites in Lagos for example, come from Ogun State. So, if there is a lockdown at the boundaries, how do you move them?
“This is apart from the process of mining and blasting rocks in an environment that requires people to work and lift things together while complying with current rules and guidelines of social distancing”, he added.
“These were why work stopped,” the former governor of Lagos said.
However, analysts who spoke to KAFTANPOST disagree with Fashola and insist that the Minister’s statement does not make much sense. This lockdown period is what should have been used to work on the roads with minimal disruption of traffic as the volume of traffic has plummeted.
Analysts point to similar infrastructure works going on in many countries under lockdown, including laying of underground cables in many countries in Europe. In Nigeria too, many private construction projects continue, unabated.
The coronavirus is often used to cover a multitude of unrelated errors. It would be recalled that the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi had earlier in the year, also blamed the coronavirus for the delay in the completion of the Lagos-Ibadan rail line. The trains have now arrived and are being test-run.
However, with the government implementing a gradual and phased easing of lockdown, Fashola said the Federal Government and state governments have approved that 11 contractors who are executing 53 projects, across 26 states should start work.
“They are all remobilising back to the site, but we are doing it under very stringent guidelines about how they would work and feed at the site because they cannot share utensils anymore”, he said.
“This a logistic challenge that nobody has a rulebook for, nobody prepared for this, so, we are adapting and moving as we go on,” he noted.
Earlier and before the lockdown, Fashola said his ministry had inspected all federal road projects across the country.
“We have over 600 road projects nationwide. There is no state in Nigeria where we are not executing a road project,” the minister added.
While speaking on recognizing inadequate accommodation as a prevalent across the world, the minister said President Muhammadu Buhari administration is committed to providing affordable housing for Nigerians.
