By now it should be no news that the Finance Ministry has slashed the budget of the Works Ministry by 89% from N100 billion to N11 billion. This was announced by Mike Onolememen, the Minister of Works, who was in the Senate to defend his ministry’s estimates for the 2015 fiscal year. Onolememen also added that no money was approved for either the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency’s capital projects or the Office of the Surveyor -General of the Federation.
Hard times are here, but how does it affect you?
First, with no money allocated for FERMA, it means that in theory at least, there will be no maintenance work carried out on an single federal road in Nigeria. To put this in context, in September 2014, the Federal Executive Council approved the grand sum of N71,648,176,867.38 for the Benin-Lagos Road alone!
With sums like that going out the window, we wonder what will happen with Nigeria’s 28,980 kilometres of paved roads?
What will happen to the N117 billion Second Niger Bridge, which the Federal Government is meant to contribute 30% (N35.1 billion) of?
And these are just roads.
