The
Minister of Works, Mr Mike Onolememen, said on Tuesday in Abuja that N117
billion will be spent to construct the second Niger Bridge.
Onolememen
made this known while defending the ministry’s budget before the Sen. Abdul
Ningi (PDP-Bauchi) led Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Subsidy Reinvestment and
Empowerment Programme (SURE-P).
The
minister said that N30 billion of the amount would be sourced from the SURE-P
while the balance would come from the private sector partners.
“What
government set up to do from the beginning was that the N30 billion counterpart
fund for the second Niger Bridge was going to be paid through the SURE-P.
“It was
postulated that every year, the sum of N10 billion would be provided in the
SURE-P for the second Niger Bridge and because it did not take off in 2012, we
downgraded the allocation until the project takes off.”
According
to him, there is massive mobilisation going on now at the location and the
ground breaking ceremony will be done before the middle of March.
“Before
mid-March, the ground breaking for the major work will be done, and from then
on full construction will commence.
“I am
sure that the project will be able to access all its funds at a time, N7
billion had earlier been used for the preparatory work on the bridge.
“Throughout
last year what we were doing was the early work; phase one for the second Niger
bridge.
“We went
to the site, we did a lot of preparatory studies, morhpological studies and
geotanical studies which led to the final design of the bridge and preparation
of the bill for engineering measurement and evaluation.”
He said
that approval had been given for the early work on phase two which would cost
about N15 billion.
“The
money for this year, N10 billion that has been appropriated will appropriately
be devoted to that.
“It is
part of the major work of the bridge, in other words, that N15 billion is part
of the total sum for the completion of that bridge.
The
minister, however, said that the completion of the project would depend on the
availability of funds.
The
Director General of the Budget Office, Dr Bright Okogu, said what the ministry
needed to do to access the N30 billion SURE-P funds was to go through the
SURE-P Secretariat Committee.
“All they
have to do is to go through the SURE-P secretariat committee, indicate evidence
of work done, ask the chairman and his team to send people to go and witness
and certify.
“Then,
they will make a claim based on that particular observation. This is all they
need to do to access the money,” Okogwu said.
At
another budget defence session, the Chairman, Senate Committee on
Communications, Sen. Gilbert Nnaji (PDP-Enugu) expressed worry that Nigeria was
still lagging behind in terms of broadband and internet penetration.
He also
wondered why budgetary allocation to the ministry had been on the decline since
its inception.
“It is
observed that the total proposal for the communications technology sector for
2014 is N14.6 billion as against N15.6 billion in 2013.
“We have
noticed a gradual decline in the total amount allocated to the sector since its
inception. From N19.6 billion in 2012 to N15.6 billion in 2013.
“We
further observe that the total Capital Expenditure proposal of N4 billion for
2014 is about 23 per cent reduced from N5.2 billion approved in 2013,” Nnaji
said.
Nnaji
urged the ministry to enlighten the committee on how it would utilise this fund
to properly execute its programmes and policies.
He gave
the assurance that the committee would assist the ministry in whatever way it
could.(NAN)
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