The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Fashola

  • Lagos deputy governor urges Nigerians to eschew violence

    Lagos State Deputy Governor Dr Idiat Adebule has urged Nigerians to eschew violence ahead of the 2019 general election.

    She spoke yesterday at the Eid-prayers at Dodan Barracks Prayer Ground in Ikoyi, Lagos.

    News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that among dignitaries who observed the Eid prayers were the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Minister of Works, Power and Housing and former governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Fashola.

    Adebule said a violence-free election would demonstrate to the world that democracy had come to stay.

    “As another election year approaches, I urge Nigerians to conduct themselves peacefully.

    “I also urge us to pray for a peaceful coexistence, enhanced national security and continued development of our dear state, Lagos and the country.

    “As we celebrate Sallah, we pray to God for wisdom to choose love instead of hatred, peace instead of violence and progress instead of stagnation.

    “By God’s grace, the future is bright as long as we allow the rule of law and peace to reign in the country,” she said.

    The deputy governor admonished Nigerians to pray for good governance and also sustain their support for the Governor Akinwunmi Ambode administration.

    Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, expressed regrets that rather than engage youths meaningfully, politicians had turned them to political thugs.

    He enjoined youths to aspire for political positions, rather than allowing themselves to be used as thugs to foment violence during and after the elections.

    “If anybody wants to use you, tell such politicians to bring his or her child. Do not allow yourself to be used.

    “My advice to the youth is that you should show interest in politics because you are not too young to run,” he said.

    Obasa promised to continue to promote the business of legislature in the interest of the people.

     

     

  • We are concentrating on completing projects -Fashola

    The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola on Friday said that the Buhari administration was focusing on completing road,  power and housing projects to deliver value to Nigerians.

    Fashola during an interactive session with 10 social clubs to give account of achievements of the Buhari administration at Lagos City Hall, said that due to completion of some road projects, the construction economy had bounced back and  promoting growth of businesses.

    He said that previous governments had reports of uncompleted projects and stressed that, uncompleted infrastructure could not be used and would not deliver values to Nigerians.

    He said that people voted for change and there was no need repeating the old system that did not deliver real value to citizens of the nation.

    He explained that in the 2015 budget, N19 billion was earmarked for road projects out of which only nine billion naira was released leaving a huge deficient that made several contractors to abandon site.

    Fashola said that the trend coupled with huge debts owed contractors affected businesses which in turn impacted the economy negatively.

    “And because of dwindling oil revenue, we had to do more with less money,’’ he said.

    He said the government decided to prioritize the roads for repair based on six main categories, which included roads that carried heaviest vehicles, those that led to the ports, roads critical to agriculture, ones that required counterpart funding and the Sukuk bonds.

    “There is no state where we are not constructing one road or the other,“ he said.

    On housing delivery, the minister said the Buhari regime was also completing housing projects started by previous administrations.

    “Is it a crime to govern sensibly to reduce waste?“ he queried.

    He said that only completed projects were useful to citizens of the nation and urged Nigerians to speak up in favour of the good gesture to complete projects.

    He said that pilot schemes were still on-going for new housing projects as there were no empirical evidence of what kind of homes people could afford or their taste preferences.

    The minister said that apart from the Shehu Shagari administration, this was the second time the Federal Government was embarking on mass housing initiatives across the country.

    He said that there was need to get the product formulation, packaging and delivery right, adding that, there were several unoccupied buildings across the country either because they were not affordable or did not meet the taste of consumers.

    “If you don’t sample correctly, the product would fail. When we say we are planning, people think we are joking,’’ the minister said.

    He said that the government through the Federal Mortgage Bank was removing impediments to access to loans and was at the same time expanding the scope to capture more beneficiaries.

    Speaking on Power, he said that power generation and distribution had improved because government was able to resolve some complex issues that came with the privatisation of power by previous government.

    He said that the various power plants across the country were being upgraded to deliver at more optimal capacity, adding that, the problems of estimated billing would be resolved with time.

    “Clearly, it is getting better, let us honestly admit,’’ he said. (NAN)

  • FEC approves N348.59bn for Akwanga-Gombe road contract

    … N12.104bn for ecological projects

    The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved N348.59 billion for construction of road linking Akwanga though Jos to Gombe.

    The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, disclosed this at the end of the meeting held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

    He said the project covers 420.6kilometers.

    Fashola said the project would be completed in 48 months.

    The Council also approved N12.104 billion for ecological projects across the country.

    The Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Femi Adesina, said the approval covers 12 states in the country.

    The states are – Anambra, Lagos, Oyo, Akwa Ibom, Adamawa, Bauchi, Edo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Plateau and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

  • FEC okays N72.9bn for road reconstruction in Lagos

    The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved N72.9 billion for reconstruction of road linking Creek Road to Tincan Island, Oworonshoki and Toll gate at the Lagos end of Lagos-Ibadan expressway.

    The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, briefed State House correspondents at the end of FEC meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.

    He said the project which would be completed in two years covers 27.8 kilometers of five lanes on both sides of the roads.

    According to him, the project excluded Coconut-Mile 2 part of the road that had already been done.

    He said the project would be handled by Dangote Group on a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) basis.

  • Fashola clarifies directive to NERC on service delivery

    The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, says his directive to Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) is rectify issues impeding electricity supply in the country, but not to demonise DisCos.

    Fashola offered the clarification while reacting to an assertion by Mr Sunny Oduntan, the Executive Director, Research and Advocacy, Association of Electricity Distributors (ANED), in Abuja on Friday.

    The minister said in a statement that his directive was to legal entities and not to an interloper.

    He said it was untrue that Oduntan’s minded interpretation of his directive was an attempt to demonise the DisCos.
    Fashola had at a news conference mandated NERC in line with the law to prevail on the DisCos to improve their distribution equipment and capacity to take up the available 2,000MWs.

    He had said that NERC should enforce the contract of DisCos to supply meters and act to ensure urgent speedy supply and installation of meters to eliminate estimated billing and promote efficient industry market structures.

    However, ANED, in a response by Oduntan, faulted Fashola’s directives to NERC to prevail on the DisCos.

    Oduntan also spoke on the wrong timing of declaration of customers’ eligibility by the minister.

    He also faulted the minster’s comment on meter supply by DisCos and claim on current power generation, among other pronouncements of the minister on the sector.

    Fashola said: “Before fiction becomes fact for lack of a response, I feel obliged to respond to some, not all of the allegations credited to one Sunday Oduntan.

    “Which he made in response to my directives to NERC and Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) as contracting parties to the DisCos.

    “Throughout my press statement which contained the directives, I referred copiously to the provisions of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) which is the law that regulates the power sector.

    “I referred to DisCos in their capacities as licencees.

    “If ANED is not a licencee, who is ANED, an NGO? If so, they should listen to consumers because nothing is going on about poor service.

    “The BPE, NBET and NERC, to whom my directives were made, contracted individually with DisCos not as an association.

    “However, to suggest therefore that my directives were political turns reality on its head.

    “For the past 20 months, in all my public briefings at monthly meetings with the DisCos these same issues of service delivery of meters, estimated billings, investment in distribution equipment by DisCos have dominated my remarks.

    “However, assuming this was not so, do the onset of elections preclude the quest for better service or continued governance?

    “His statement that no directives from me will save the power sector from collapse is consistent with the views of someone who has no skin in the game.

    “It is revealing of the mindset of a saboteur not a builder, and he will do very well to acquaint himself and advise his co-travellers about the consequences of sabotaging the economy under our laws.

    “I am optimistic that the power sector will prosper in spite of Oduntan-minded personalities.

    “As for the allegation that figures of power generation and distribution released by me are not true, the taste of the pudding lies with those who eat it.

    “Electricity consumers know what their experience was in 2015, 2016, 2017 and today.

    “These figures have been released many months back when we reached those milestones as part of my monthly report and roadmap of incremental power.

    “It is obvious that the warning lights of compliance necessity are blinking, and those he represents do not like the colour.

    “If the DisCos connect with their consumers, they will hear from them first-hand, how traumatised they feel about load shedding, absence of meters and estimated billing.

    “The GenCos, who are short paid because the DisCos under-remit in spite of high estimated billing to consumers, will tell DisCos how they feel.

    “If Oduntan truly speaks for the DisCos, which I doubt, he should ignore the messenger (Fashola) and advise those for whom he acts as surrogate, to focus on the message.”

    The minister said his directive seeks to rectify the problems because he believes they could be rectified.

    According to him, his directive, among others, is that electricity consumers want better service, NBET wants its money of about N800 billion from the DisCos, so it can pay GenCos.

    He also said DisCos should respond on why 408 feeders, which have a capacity to deliver 5,756MW of power to consumers only carry 444MW because of faulty lines, bad equipment and load shedding.

    “These are part of the subject of my directives to NERC to address deliberate load shedding, that is what electricity consumers want, better service,’’ the minister said. (NAN)

  • FEC okays N35.613bn for roads projects

    The Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on Wednesday approved a total sum of N35.613 billion for roads and bridge projects in the country.

    The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, briefed State House correspondents at the end of FEC meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

    According to him, N8.9 billion was approved for construction of Ikom Bridge and road in Calabar, Cross River.

    According to Fashola, the projects will create access to the port for trailers to move freely with their containers and will be completed in 24 months.

    The minister said N11.78 billion was approved for road project in Yobe State, while N8.6 billion was approved for road project in Kwara State.

    While N5.4 billion was approved for road project in Abia State, N933 million was approved for automatic meter reading equipment for Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

  • Fashola urges investment in education, others

    MINISTER for Power, Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola has called for continued investment in education, hard work, production and love for the country.

    He spoke at City Hall in Onikan, Lagos yesterday during an event to celebrate his 55th birthday.

    The theme was: “The youth in Nigeria: Mapping the future”.

    The minister said there should be continued investment in education to secure the future of the youth and the nation.

    He said: “We should also not let down our local language. We should try and explain things we know to our children in our local language, because the understanding is deeper when the teaching is in the local dialect.”

    Fashola called for children to be taught how to use their hands, saying this would make them to become producers.

    “Often times, we are in a hurry to get our children memorise things without understanding and this makes them to only know how to take orders.

    Children should be originated to solve problems. We need to change our curriculum; classes should be dedicated to solve problems so that we will build a generation of problem solvers.

    “We must not speak evil against our father land, which is our country Nigeria. If you love something, you will overlook the negative sides and focus on the strength. A lot of us have identified the problems we have as a nation. But how many of us have brought up the solution.”

    He urged Nigerians to spend more time on production and hard work as well as patronise made in Nigeria things.  “We want Nigerians to produce opportunities and food among other things. It does not start and end with government alone; we all have a part to play,” Fashola said.

    Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), The Chair Centre Group, Ibukun Awosika, said there was need to create a right environment for the youth. He noted that it must start with harmonising the education system.

    Awosika, who was the keynote speaker said: “The future of the adults is not secured if we cannot secure the future of the youth. If we do not build the right generation of youths now in the country, they will be the one to destroy the country in the future.

    “We need to give the youths the knowledge that will be relevant now and in years to come. Graduates must have the skills that are needed in the work place. We need to review the knowledge we are passing in the institution, to know if the knowledge is relevant to the needs of the present day.”

     

  • Fashola, others urge youths to drive Nigeria’s development

    The Minister of power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola on Thursday called for value reorientation among youths to attract positive development to the nation.

    Fashola made the assertion at an event organised by a youth group tagged “The Youth in Nigeria: Mapping the Future” to mark the minister’s 55th birthday in Lagos.

    The minister said young people fought for the nation’s independence, unity and built some major infrastructure in the past, and that the new generation of youths must be determined to drive the nation’s development.

    He urged youths seeking political office to have the interest to serve at heart, saying only those who were ready to add other people’s problem to their own should be in government.

    Fashola called for more investment in education and use of local languages to aid better understanding that would translate to rapid industralisation.

    He also called for more skill deployment among youths to increase capacity in local production.

    “We have to produce and we have to spend more time with hard work,” he said.

    While giving a keynote address, an entrepreneur, Mrs Ibukun Awosika, said youths and women development as well as empowerment were important to put the economy on the part of rapid industrialisation.

    Awosika said there were several out of school children that must be educated or trained to curb youth restiveness and terrorism.

    She urged the government to create an enabling environment, starting with education and getting the right curriculum to get youths prepared for the task of nation building.

    “We need to build an eco system for the nation to thrive. We have many gaps within our eco system. When people are under utilised, then there is agitation,” she said.

    She also stressed the need to equip youths with entrepreneurial skills to reduce poverty.

    Panelists at the event lamented the structure of political parties that excluded majority of Nigerian youths and women.

    Ms. Ayisha Osori, an author and political commentator, said young people were ready to drive the nation’s development but were constrained by cumbersome processes.

    She urged young people to evolve party ideologies that placed merit above zoning.

    Asuqua Ekpeyong, Commissioner for finance, Cross River, said funding affected the participation of young Nigerians in politics.

    He said the Nigerian youths accounted for 60 million of the nation’s population and that if only 10 per cent of that population donated money, the youths could take over leadership.

    According to him, youths were involved in a lot of activism which was limited to online, but he said social media activism must transform into physical space to achieve results.

    Bright Okpocha, popularly known as Basket Mouth, said technology had increased the influence of youths in various areas and could be used to achieve growth in the agricultural sector and other areas of development.

    He said there were several things youths could do for themselves if given the right infrastructure and enabling environment. (NAN)

  • FG to flag-off Abuja-Kano road project

    The Federal Government will on Tuesday flag-off the reconstruction of 375.4km Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano road project.

    The project was approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and awarded in December 2017 to Julius Berger Nigeria Plc at a contract sum of N155, 470,626,078.07.

    It has a completion period of 36 months.

    The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola is expected to flag off the project.

    The two Ministers of State, Mustapha Baba Shehuri and Suleiman Hassan Zarma, Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje, his Kaduna State counterpart, Nasir El Rufai, Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Alhaji Muhammad Bello and Chairman of Senate Committee on Works, Senator Kabiru Gaya, will also attend the ceremony.

    The road is expected to serve as major trunk road linking the south to the northern part of the country.

    According to the project brief made available to The Nation in Kano, vehicular traffic on the road has increased significantly since it was opened to traffic in the early 1990s.

    “The road has outlived its service life and is characterized with several failed sections and multiple potholes thereby necessitating the need for rehabilitation of the entire length of the road as the scope of repair works over the years proved inadequate as evidenced by continuous deterioration,” the contractors said in the brief.

    The work description showed that the entire stretch of the Zuba – Kaduna – Zaria – Kano road will be fully rehabilitated.

    “Major aspect of the work is the scarification of the existing asphaltic concrete on carriageway, bituminous surface on shoulders and the compaction of the existing base as sub-base as well as reformation of shoulders,” the firm added.

     

     

     

  • SERAP sues Fashola over power privatisation

    The Minister of Power, Works and Housing Mr Babatunde Fashola has been sued over his failure to account, for “the spending on the privatisation of the electricity sector and the exact amount of post-privatisation spending on generation companies (GENCOS), distribution companies (DISCOS) and Transmission Company of Nigeria”.

    Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) which instituted the court action also wants Fashola to explain if such spending came from budgetary allocations or other sources.”

    In the suit filed last week at the Federal High Court, Ikoyi, Lagos, SERAP is seeking “an order for leave to apply for judicial review and an order of mandamus directing or compelling Mr Fashola to provide specific details on the privatisation of the electricity sector, the names of all the companies and individuals involved; and to publish widely including on a dedicated website any such information.”

    The suit followed SERAP’s Freedom of Information request dated 7 May 2018 to Mr Fashola giving him 14 days to provide “information on the status of implementation of the 25-year national energy development plan, and whether the Code of Ethics of the privatisation process which bars staff of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and members of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) from buying shares in companies being privatised were deliberately flouted.”

    The suit filed on behalf of SERAP by its counsel, Ms. Bamisope Adeyanju read in part: “Publishing the information requested and making it widely available to the public would serve the public interest and provide insights relevant to the public debate on the ongoing efforts to prevent and combat a culture of mismanagement of public funds, corruption and impunity of perpetrators.”

    “Most of the companies that won the bids had no prior experience in the power sector and little or no capacity at all to manage the sector. The privatisation of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) have yielded the country total darkness. The gains of privatisation have been lost through alleged corruption, manipulation of rules and disregard to extant laws and lack of transparency in the exercise.”

    “To further highlight the seriousness of the situation, several years after the country’s power sector was privatised, millions of Nigerian households particularly the socially and economically vulnerable sectors of the population continue to complain about outrageous bills for electricity not consumed, and poor power supply from distribution firms.

    “Millions of Nigerians continue to be exploited through the use of patently illegal estimated billing by DISCOs. One wonders the essence of the privatisation if there has been no corresponding improvement in power for Nigerians.”

    “Enforcing the right to truth would allow Nigerians to gain access to information essential to the fight against corruption and provide a form of reparation to victims of grand corruption in the power sector. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its General Comment 3 has implied that privatisation process should not be detrimental to the effective realisation of all human rights, including access to regular electricity supply.”

    “SERAP has the right to request the information under contention on the basis of several provisions of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, 2011. By Section (1) of the FoI Act, SERAP is entitled as of right to request for or gain access to information, including information on post-privatisation spending by the Federal Government and accounts of spending on the private entities such as GENCOS and DISCOS.”