Babatunde Fashola, the minister of works and housing has announced that the Federal Government will no longer make a refund to states that repair federal roads.
He advised the states to concentrate on state-funded roads and made this known on Thursday, while defending the budget of his ministry before the Works Committee of the House of Representatives.
“When we came in, we inherited quite a number of such debts from states which repaired Federal roads and asked for refunds. The President directed that we pay all those that were approved by the previous government.
“He also directed that states should concentrate on their own roads and that states can only get involved in Federal roads if they are repairing them and not coming to ask for a refund,” he said.
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Fashola went on to complain that the N157b capital budgetary allocated to his ministry is too small as it will not even be enough to pay contractors for jobs already done.
He went on to say the ministry needs N306 billion to pay contractors for jobs already done, while N2.93 billion is pending for the multilateral-funded projects.
The minister also revealed that the Federal Government has about ‘524 ongoing road projects across the country, four multilateral-funded road projects, 81 roads under the Presidential Infrastructural Development Fund (PIDF) and 45 others being funded under the Sukuk bond. ‘
He added that N255 billion is required to fund some of the major roads/
