The House of Representatives is worried about the stalling of work on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway project.
After a debate, the lawmakers demanded a full explanation from the Executive on how the project will be funded.
The lawmakers also expressed misgiving about the pace of work and funding of the Second Niger Bridge linking the West to the East.
They wanted to know whether the projects are to be fully-funded by the Federal Government or to be executed under a concession agreement with private firms.
The House Committee on Works was mandated to investigate the nature of the contracts and concession arrangement and report back in four weeks for further parliamentary action.
But the discussion did not make reference to the pending virement request by the Executive on the 2017 budget.
The virement is meant to take back the money removed from the Lagos –Ibadan project to service constituency projects by the lawmakers.
The resolution of the House followed the passage of a motion by Solomon Maren with the title: “Need to investigate nature of the contract or concession arrangement on Second Niger Bridge and Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.”
Moving the motion, Maren said the projects had not followed the established pattern of project execution and that the Minister of Power, Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola, recently warned on the possibility of both projects ending up as “white elephant” .
Allocation for the projects in the 2017 budget were not adequate and they are not under concession agreement.
He said: “Contracts for the construction of the Second Niger Bridge and reconstruction of the Lagos-Ibadan Express Road have continued to feature in the annual budgets without any seeming signal of their completion or the amount required to do so.”
Maren, in response to a remark by the Deputy Speaker, Yussuff Lasun said though two contractors were handling the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Federal Government is yet to make up its mind on the funding arrangement for the two projects.
Lasun, against the tradition of not debating infrastructure motions, gave the floor to the Chairman, Committee on Works, Tobey Okechukwu, to speak on the issue.
Okechuwku, who supported the motion, said it had become imperative for government to come up with a framework for the completion of the projects, adding that this stemmed from the observation of his committee that while the Lagos-Ibadan Road is “supposed to have alternative funding”, the Federal Government had not made a clear-cut decision on the funding plan for the Second Niger Bridge.
The lawmaker said the “piece-meal procurement” funding method hitherto employed by the government should be dropped.
Mohammed Sani-Abdul, who also supported the motion, said despite litigation on the Lagos-Ibadan Road, work was still ongoing.
He said the situation of the Second Niger-Bridge project is of great concern.
The non-utilisation of the N14 billion 2016 budget allocation and the N10 billion allocated in 2017 for the Second Niger Bridge was worrisome based on the fact that the concession agreement for the project was between Federal Government and an international investment company, which later sub-contracted the project to Julius Berger Plc.
With no contract between the Federal Government and Julius Berger, the construction firm cannot be directly funded through budgetary allocations for the project, Sani-Abdul’s said.
