President Muhammadu Buhari unveiled his cabinet on November 11, 2015, five months after his May 29 inauguration. Of utmost surprise was the merging of the supposedly powerful ministries of Power, Works and Housing.
The emerging ministry was left to the then 52-year-old Babatunde Raji Fashola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), to consolidate. The ministry also has Mustapha Shehuri as Minister of State.
Fashola, the immediate past two-term Governor of Lagos State, immediately got many aliases, including “Three-in-one’’, “Tripod’’, “Engine Room’’ and “Agbari (Brainy)’’, etc.
At his maiden press briefing tagged “Setting the Agenda’’, he promised to do his best, noting that he had a good team to work with.
The 2016 budget had a tortuous trip to the National Assembly, with allegations of “padding’’ and all that, until its assent by President Buhari in May.
Fashola, during a media briefing to mark his first year as minister, said the timing of the budget altered some of his projections. The commemoration briefing tagged “State of Play’’ (pun intended), painted the picture of a rosy future.
He said the ministry had started implementing the 2016 budget of N260 billion with the release of N70 billion made in June (for Quarter I) and N60 billion made in October for Quarter II).
In the Works Ministry, “we had inherited about 206 road projects already contracted out; with outstanding completion costs in the region of N1.5 trillion.
“Although the Works Ministry’s share of the 2016 appropriation was N260 billion, which was a lot more than the 2015 budget of only N18 billion as at the time the last administration left, it is a drop in the ocean against the liabilities that were outstanding to contractors.
“Our interactions with contractors showed that many of them had not been paid for an average of two to three years before we resumed, and this explained the stoppage of works by the contractors, the layoff of workers, and consequently poor condition of many roads.
“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 much.
“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’’.
According to Fashola, priority would be given to roads that carry the heaviest cargo, allow farmers, businessmen, industries and travellers to move their goods and themselves across the country to drive productive activities.
“Secondly, we chose roads that support our energy sufficiency and put our resources in roads leading to and from petroleum tank farms, so that we can move petrol, diesel and kerosene across Nigeria.
“We also chose roads that led to and from our major seas and airports so that maritime business can go on to drive the economy.’’
The minister said, “We have been mobilising contractors back to work on roads across the six Geo-Political Zones’’, including Port Harcourt-Aba; Sokoto-Tambuwal- Makera-Kontagara; Ilorin-Jebba; Loko-Oweto Bridge; Shagamu- Ibadan; Shagamu-Lagos, and Ogbomosho-Oko-Ilogbo-Osogbo.
“Other priority roads are Funtua-Katsina; Wukari-Akwana; Abriba-Arochukwu-Ohafia; Abuja-Lokoja-Airport; Oji-Achi-Obeagu-Mmaku-Awgu-Ndeaboh-Mpu-Okpanku; Ajase Ipo-Offa-Erinle; and Ikot Ekpene Border-Aba-Owerri Dualisation.
“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.
“This has clearly started on the roads I have spoken about, and the results will accrue as work progresses over time until the roads are completed.
“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 had done over the years to our collective detriment’’.
Fashola also said that the first step to maintenance “is to restore the authority of all the state controllers of works, to charge them to take responsibility for all federal roads within their states of postings, and to bring up an annual budget that will be submitted to Parliament.
“Going forward in 2017, we have 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.
“We plan to do the same for states that produce mineral resources from mining and for states where we have strategic fuel depots’’.
In the Power sector, the minister said: “Following the privatisation in 2013, the ministry is now largely a policymaker and regulator through the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
“It is now only directly responsible for expansion and maintenance of the transmission line through (TCN) and completion of projects started before the privatisation, which were uncompleted and about which I will share a few details.
The story in power is not different from that of works in terms of uncompleted projects.
Fashola said the power sector inherited over 100 transmission projects for which contractors were not paid for about three years.
“This not only resulted in stoppage of work, lay off of workers, but left projects uncompleted. It also resulted in contractors abandoning over 800 containers, which contained transformers, switches, panels and other equipment needed as materials to complete transmission projects because they could not pay for them.
“To compound the situation, there was no provision in the 2015 budget to pay them as only N5 billion was budgeted for the Ministry of Power.
“All this has changed. The ministry has N24 billion for 2016 and has started paying contractors and getting the necessary approvals for them to return to work’’.
According to Fashola, the transmission grid in Nigeria is not static at 5000 MW and will continue to expand as more power generation stations contribute to it.
“Furthermore, with the budget, we have started paying the shipping companies and warehouse owners who kept custody of the containers, and the report I received last week indicates that the first batch of about 400 containers will be released to contractors to go out and do their work.
“In addition to transmission, we are working to complete uncompleted power generation projects to deliver on the incremental power programme of our roadmap of incremental, steady and uninterrupted power.
“Some of the projects that should start coming to conclusion in 2017 are the 215 MW Kaduna Power, 40 MW Kashimbilla Power (Hydro), 40 MW Gurara I Power (Hydro), 29 MW Dadin Kowa Power (Hydro), 10 MW Katsina Power (Wind) 1,125 MW (14 Solar Projects) and the 240 MW Emergency Power Project for Afam (Gas).’’
Fashola noted that transmitted power peaked at 5007MW earlier this year, for the first time in the nation’s 63-year-old experiment with electricity. He also said that the 5007MW excluded about 3000MW lost to gas pipe vandalism.
“On the distribution side, we continue to work with the (Distribution Companies (DISCOs) to improve their customer service and in particular, meters supply.’’
The minister, however, appealed to electricity consumers to be patient over the insufficiency of prepaid meters, saying the facility would now be mass produced locally.
“All told, while there is still work to do, and there is the big problem of liquidity to overcome, the promise ahead looks good, the plans are clear and our resolve to implement is unwavering’’.
In 2017 and beyond, Fashola said the ministry intends to roll out Rural Electrification Implementation Programme “which Mr President has now approved as required by the law. Our objective is to improve access to power for rural communities’’.
In the housing sector, Fashola said: “We have not yet started constructing houses. But tenders have been considered and over 500 contracts are now ready to be issued for work to start in earnest.
However, we have received land from 27 states as at October 24, 2016 and more are still responding’’.
The minister said that houses would be designed in line with the climatic, socio-cultural and land use peculiarities of the areas in which they will be located.
“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 to provide investment information for local manufacturers to position to respond and supply in order to create employment and get factories back to work’’.
The ministry calculates it will need 22,288 doors; 27,849 windows; 3,502 water cisterns; 3,502 wash hand basins; 2,830 kitchen sinks; 261,299 Sq. metres of floor tiles; 178, 680 Sq. metres of wall tiles; 561,119 litres of paints; and 342,960 Sq. metres of roofing materials.
It said that the first phase of house construction would require 413,000 man days of skilled labour, and 440,000 man days of unskilled labour.
“While our planning and research continues, the above is at least indicative of the kind of attention and dedication we are demanding of our staff and the response we are getting’’.
Going forward in 2017, we plan to build more houses first to stimulate jobs. Thereafter, we plan to assess the affordability and the acceptability of our designs and we plan to industrialise 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.
“It is my belief that if we can achieve this, the size of our 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.
“How much we can then deliver will be defined by the size of our resources and our ambition and not by the absence of a workable plan’’.
Some of those facing difficulties on some roads, those having disruptions in electricity supply, especially those still contending with crazy bills, may not agree with Fashola for “making things look this simple’’. But, time will surely tell.