President Muhammadu Buhari
Construction
work on the Second Niger Bridge may be further delayed as the Federal
Government has said it is currently reviewing the contract sum for the
project to justify the cost.
The Goodluck Jonathan administration
said in January this year that the government had spent N10bn on the
project out of the N130bn total cost of the contract.
But the Director-General, Infrastructure
Concession Regulatory Commission, Mr. Aminu Diko, in an interview with
State House correspondents on Wednesday, after briefing President
Muhammadu Buhari in the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said the ICRC was
currently withholding the certificate of compliance for the project.
He said the certificate was being
withheld because of many issues regarding the project, adding that the
commission was engaging the Ministry of Works on how to resolve the
issues.
Specifically, he said the ICRC had asked the ministry to review the cost of the project with a view to justifying it.
He also identified the clamour for
compensation by owners of the land where the project is being sited as
one of the pending issues.
He said, “The issue of the Second Niger
Bridge is one of the projects that we discussed with the President. We
did say that the project is in the commission for regulatory oversight.
We have been discussing the transaction with the Ministry of Works. But
before it can be finalised, the commission has to give a certificate of
compliance, but we have not done that because we have seen a lot of
issues that we are uncomfortable with.
“We are talking with the Ministry of
Works for them to correct it. The communities around that area are
clamouring that their land has been taken and that they have not been
compensated adequately. As a matter of fact, we got a letter from the
Onitsha Traditional Council complaining that they have not been
adequately represented in this transaction. With this kind of issue, we
are not saying that something has not been done properly but we need to
be convinced that these few problems are sorted out properly.
“We will also talk about the actual cost
of the bridge eventually; we have asked the Ministry of Works to review
it and justify how much the project should cost.”
Diko, however, said he had no idea of
the present state of the project, whose groundbreaking was done with
fanfare by the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
He explained that there would be a lot of studies, including an integrity test, to be done on the bridge.
Diko said, “I have no idea about the
status of the project. What I need to tell Nigerians is that the PPPs
take a long time to mature. This is different from a project in which
you have money in your pocket or in your account and you just bring it
out and tell somebody to go and do it. But when it is a PPP transaction,
you first engage a number of people. You have bankers, lawyers,
engineers. They all collaborate to form consultancy for that
transaction. For the Second Niger Bridge, there will be a lot of studies
that need to be done on the integrity of the bridge itself, which will
take time; it is not something we can see being completed in the next
six months.
“I will like us to be patient about it;
we know that it is a critical road. We also know how Nigerians suffer
during festive holidays and we hear people sleep on that old bridge. The
time has come for us to bring succour to Nigerians.”
The ICRC boss added that when properly
signed and executed, the commission would also take custody of the
agreements to ensure that there is total compliance.
He added that he also told the President
some of the limitations the commission has, the most significant of
which was the commission’s enabling law. He described the law as
“ineffective.”
Diko said, “It (the law) is very
ineffective. So we have proposed an amendment to the law and he has
agreed to support the passing of the bill when it comes back to him from
the Attorney-General’s office.
“We also discussed some of the legacy
concessions that we inherited such as the port terminals, the Lagos
International Trade Fair, the Tafawa Balewa Square and the Lagos-Ibadan
Expressway.
“We also discussed all the projects that
were started under the ICRC Act, one of which is the second Niger
Bridge, the National Theatre Complex, Lagos.
“These are important projects to the
country and in addition to that, this country is proposing to build
three deep seaports for Nigeria with a combined estimated cost of about
$6bn. So, you can imagine the kind of opportunities it can create as far
as job creation is concerned and as far as vibrancy of the economy is
concerned.
“So, we are reviewing this proposal with the Ministry of Transport and in due course, we will come out with a position on that.”
Diko said the President handed down two directives to the commission.
He said the President directed that
state governors should be involved in encouraging farmers to utilise the
33 agricultural silos being built all over the country.
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