Works and Housing Minister Babatunde Fashola has said looted funds recovered from foreign countries were part of the money used for infrastructural development, especially in the construction and repairs of roads across the country.The minister said the Muhammadu Buhari administration spent a chunk of the recovered loot on the Niger Bridge, Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Kano expressways among the road projects across the country.
He said N199 billion had been spent on the construction of the nearly completed Bodo-Bonny Bridge in Rivers State.
Fashola said these and many other road projects, like the Enugu-Port Harcourt Road, are among the Federal Government’s infrastructure projects in Rivers State.
The minister said it had begun digitising the land registry in the country, moving it from paper documents to electronic to further improve efficiency.
This, according to him, is expected to go live this year.
Speaking in an interview on TVC News, Fashola said aside from the provision of houses through the National Housing Programme, over 13,000 kilometres of roads and bridges were under construction or rehabilitation across the country.He said: “In spite of dwindling oil revenues at the onset of this government, challenges with getting a budget in place that we all remember, this President was single-minded in his commitment that wherever he found the money, he would use it.”One of the funds that were committed to infrastructure was the money recovered from outside Nigeria, stolen and looted out of Nigeria into foreign lands, and they have been seized. It was this President’s goodwill to say: ‘Please, can we have these funds back?’
“They released some of those funds on conditions. Some of those funds were committed to the Niger Bridge, Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Kano expressways, and the results are there to see.
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“Another source of funding was debt-issuance. One of them was the Sukuk funding, which was committed to certain milestones of project implementation as a basis for granting funding.
“Therefore, for those who complained about debts, that is one place that the government has raised money. Also, if you look at the country, you will see the Sukuk signboards so that you can see what the debt is for.
“The other place is the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) tax credit, which is one of the broader policies of asking the private sector to say: ‘Look, let us have a partnership. Pay your taxes in advance, but don’t give them to us, use them to finance infrastructure that the public can use and which may benefit your business.’ “The Dangote Group has been part of that. Also, the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) company, which is partly government-owned and majority shareholding is private, has invested its own in building a bridge in Rivers State, a very big and defining infrastructure that will connect the mainland of Bodo, to the Island of Bonny, for the first time in Nigeria.
“Otherwise, the only way to get to that island has always been by boat or by helicopter. It is almost finished. That was a N199 billion project.
“Sometimes, when I hear that nothing is being done by the Federal Government in Rivers State, I say go and see the Bodo-Bonny Bridge, apart from the Enugu-Port Harcourt road, and so many other roads. “
“It is in that basket that the NNPC tax credit comes into play and advances the pace of work, like providing funding for 21 major roads covering over 1,000 kilometres that are critical petroleum pipelines and transport networks for distributing goods and services in the country.”