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FG approves contracts worth N59.8bn for Infrastructure Projects

By on November 8, 2012

 

The Federal Executive Council, FEC, yesterday, approved contracts worth N59.8 billion for rehabilitation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliamentary building, the construction of the Mambila Hydro Electricity Dam projects and road construction.

 

Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, after the meeting, told correspondents that the contracts were under the Ministries of the Federal Capital Territory, Niger Delta Affairs and Power.

 

“The contracts approval were in addition to the approval of a loan of $77 million (about N12 billion) for water projects in Lagos and Cross River states to facilitate access to water in a number of cities and towns in the states.”

 

Mr Labaran Maku accompanied by The Minister of Communications Technology, Niger Delta Affairs and Minister of states for the FCT mentioned, the construction of a 23-kilometre Sagbemi-Kiribo-Gada-Egbekigbo in Ondo State at the cost of N3.555 billion with completion period of 24 months and the augmentation on the contract for the Ibadan-Illorin road at a cost of N444 million as some of the contracts awarded yesterday.

 

He also mentioned the approval for the complete rehabilitation of the ECOWAS Parliamentary building in Abuja at the cost of N3.3 billion.

 

Other decisions were the signing of a memorandum of understanding with two Chinese companies for the construction of the Mambila and Zungeru hydro electricity dams, which would be on the basis of build, operate and transfer with the Federal Government contributing 25 per cent equity share for the Zungeru dam and the extension of service lanes from kilometre zero on the Niger bridge at Onitsha to kilometre one at a cost of N2.393 billion.

 

On loan for water projects in Lagos, C-River

 

On the proposed loan for water projects in Lagos and Cross River, Maku said the loan is being given on concessionary ground to these two states to rehabilitate urban water works, adding that $43.92 million will go to Cross River, while Lagos will get $33.83 million.

He said, “In the case of Lagos, the loan has been granted to enable the Lagos State government improve the quality of water treated for public supply. Work is ongoing and this is a very strategic loan for a large city like Lagos.”

 

“In the case of Cross River State, the loan is to facilitate access to water through a network of supply to a number of cities and towns in the state. However, the first is to extend water supply in the Calabar metropolitan area to ensure that all people living within Calabar have access to clean water through the public tap system.”

 

The Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Omobolaji Johnson, during the briefing said government had taken measures to check the poor service delivery by Telecom Service providers.

 

According to her, “the pace at which operators have been investing in expansion, modernization, and upgrade of their infrastructure to cope with the demand for voice, data, and SMS services. The second reason is the promotions that we are seeing by the operators that are causing the degradation of the networks, promotions that ask subscribers to come back, promotions that promise cars, houses, and aero planes.”

 

She mentioned flood, attacks on the system and promotional activities as the main causes, adding, “We have been in discussions with the network operators, the NCC, and we are working to improve the quality of service.”

 

“In the coming days, NCC would curtail or stop all promotions that either increase subscribers’ base that are the subscribers’ minutes or add to the subscriber base that are causing additional congestion on the network. The second thing we are looking at is if you recall we did fine the operators based on their not meeting the quality of service status and we did worked with them after the fines and we agreed the term upon which they would upgrade their infrastructure and meet the new quality of service indicators. We also agreed that in December, we would do another detailed review of the quality of service indicator and any network operator that is found wanting will be appropriately sanctioned by the regulator.

 

I think now given the poor quality of service people are experiencing, we are not ruling out some kind of consumer compensation. We understand and feel the pains of Nigerians when you tried to make calls and you cannot make them.”

 

“The third thing we are doing is talking to our state governors, federal and state ministries, and agencies that inadvertently are creating bottle necks in the roll out of this infrastructure. It is a demand a supply issue and where we do not have large enough infrastructures for the large population we have today. There a number of things such as procurement of rights of way, permits to build base stations that are taking too long and are costing too much. We are working the state governors, we have preliminary briefed to the National Economic Council, NEC, and we have begun to work with them to reduce all the bottlenecks in the roll out of infrastructure.

 

“Over the last one week or so you have been getting SMS when you make a call or send and SMS. This is a measures introduced by the NCC in an effort to increase the transparency in the billing irregularities that our network operators sometimes do. Therefore, you can actually keep track of what is coming out of the pay as you go or if you are on contract how much exactly you are spending.

 

“we will start the live testing of our number portability in December and we will go live on a number of portability in the first quarter of next year and that will give Nigerian the ability to move networks according to their preferences, which of the network they prefer based on the quality of the service they are offering . I think it is important to also say that we are encouraging investments into the development of our ICT infrastructure.”

 

After the meeting the Information minister, Labaran Maku said the concessionary loan from a France agency will fund ongoing urban water projects in the two states.

 

He said $43.9 million (N6.8bn) will go to Cross River and $33.8 million (about N5.2bn) to Lagos state.

 

Maku said, “The loan is to facilitate access to water in a number cities and towns in the states. In Cross River, the loan will be used to provide water supply in Calabar metropolis, it will also cover Ogoja, Ikom, and Obudu.”

 

The minister of state for Power, Zainab Kuchi on her part had this to say, “We have agreed with the consortium handling the projects to complete work by 2014 so that the president can commission them by the first quarter of 2015. The Mambila dam is to be built operate and transfer by Messrs Sino hydro while government is to provide 25 percent for Zungeru dam which is $309 million (about N49 billion).”

 

 

On his part, the minister of state for FCT, Olajumoke Akinjide said N3.3 billion was approved for the rehabilitation work at the ECOWAS parliament building.

 

 

FEC also approved N2.3 billion for expansion work on the service lane of the Niger Bridge at Onitsha, N444 million for completion of the Ibadan-Oyo section of the Ilorin-Ibadan expressway, he said.