The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola on Tuesday unveiled the blueprint of the Buhari administration on infrastructural development for Nigeria, announcing that the Federal Government would re-introduce highway tolling to raise additional funds to finance road maintenance, increase electricity tariff and construct 17, 760 flats nationwide to address housing deficit.
Fashola, at his first news conference tagged “Setting the Agenda for Delivering Change”, noted that electricity tariffs, particularly in populous areas and industrial clusters would increase when the new rates are unveiled. The minister stated that the government would prioritise the completion of ongoing power projects and would consider setting up embedded power generation stations in commercial centres in various states. He said,
“We will want state governments to help us identify and enumerate the very populous, industrial and commercial clusters in their states where we can provide embedded power. This will make life easy for those who are involved in manufacturing, fabrication and other related activities.
“Perhaps the tariffs here, honestly, may be slightly higher than what is obtained, but the truth is that there will be a significant improvement on what we have and we will need the collaboration of Discos to achieve this.”
He explained that Gencos and Discos are focused on producing power and distributing it while government was now a regulator through the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). He said that the Federal Government would strengthen this part of its responsibility so that it could hold the Gencos and Discos to their contracts with citizens.
He reiterated that government must play its role of providing gas and expanding the transmission network. He said the ministry of petroleum had indicated interest to build pipelines to transport gas to power plants that would add another 2,000 mw to power stock within 12-15 months.
According to him, government has identified 142 projects of which 45 are at 50 per cent completion and about 22 can be completed within a year.
He explained that government would expand the carrying capacity of TCN, Gencos and the Discos, so that in future there would be capacity to carry whatever power was generated. He assured the investors that government would maintain its credibility with them, adding that the surest way not to have power was to oppose the implementation of the Tariff Order.
Fashola said government would meet with NERC to ensure that both consumers and investors would not be cheated. On housing, he said that 480 flats would be built per state.
He said that the ministry would collaborate with state governors to provide land of between five and 10 hectares with title documents and access roads to the project sites.
“In the housing sector, if we complete our ongoing projects, and we get land from state governors and the FCT, using the Lagos Homes model, we should start 40 blocks of housing in each state and FCT. “We see this leading to potential delivery of 12 flats (homes) per block and 480 flats (homes) per state, and 17,760 flats (homes) nationwide, for a start.
“These figures are only examples and not fixed in definition and they are subject first to budgetary approvals and availability of finance.’’
Fashola said that the projects would create job opportunities for many Nigerians, especially the youth. On works and the reintroduction of tolling, the Minister said that adequate funding of the nation’s road infrastructure would generate job opportunities and reduce unemployment in the country.
“Maintenance would be our watchword. We are setting up a robust maintenance regime to keep our highways in good shape.
“This shows that tolling is necessary to support government funding. So, it will not be too much if we ask every road user to pay little to augment government funding for road maintenance. – Daily Times.
