You’ve stark, worrisome knowledge, Fashola tells lawmakers

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… says legislators more interested in boreholes than
building highways

•‘No concession agreements on Lagos-Ibadan road, Niger
bridge’

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, on
Monday hit back at members of the National Assembly, as he argued
that the lawmakers had “stark and worrisome knowledge” about the
budget of his ministry before altering several of its allocations
in the 2017 Appropriation Act.

Fashola, who expressed deep concern over the recourse of the
National Assembly’s spokespersons to name-calling regarding his
observations on the 2017 budget, also stated that there was no
concession agreement for the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger
Bridge, as well as other road projects across the country.

In a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr.
Hakeem Bello, the minister said he was worried that the National
Assembly failed to address the fundamental points about
development-hindering cuts in the allocations to several vital
projects of the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, as well as
those of other ministries.

Fashola had while acknowledging that the legislators could
contribute to budget-making in a recent interview, disagreed with
the practice where the legislative arm of government unilaterally
alters the budget after putting members of the executive through
budget defence sessions and committee hearings to the extent that
some of the projects proposed would have become materially
altered.

The minister had observed that it amounted to a waste of
taxpayers’ money and an unnecessary distortion of orderly planning
and development for lawmakers to unilaterally insert items not
under the exclusive or concurrent lists of the constitution like
boreholes and streetlights after putting government Ministries,
Departments and Agencies through the process of budget defence.

With specific regard to the Ministry of Power, Works and
Housing, Fashola listed the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Bodo-Bonny
road, the Kano-Maiduguri road, the Second Niger Bridge and the
long-drawn Mambilla hydropower project, among others, as projects
that the National Assembly materially altered their allocations in
favour of boreholes and primary health care centres, which were
never discussed during the ministerial budget defence.

In their responses, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and
Public Affairs, Senator Abdullahi Usman; and the House of
Representatives spokesperson, Abdulrazak Namdas, accused the
minister of spreading half-truths and making fallacious
statements.

They argued that Fashola should have known that the National
Assembly only interfered with projects that had concession
agreements and private sector funding components.

They also accused the minister of wanting to hold on to such
projects in order that he would continue to award contracts.

However, while dismissing the allegations, Fashola said it was
sad that the lawmakers would resort to name-calling without
understanding the facts of what they were getting into.

Taking the projects, which the lawmakers chose to focus
individually, the minister insisted that there was no subsisting
concession agreement on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

He noted that what the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory
Commission had as a financing agreement from a consortium of banks
was like a loan that would have to be paid back through budgetary
provisions.

According to him, there was no fallacy or half-truth in the
allegation that the allocation to the road was reduced, adding that
the lawmakers admitted this and sought to rationalise it by a
concession or financing arrangement that had failed to build the
road since 2006.

The biggest momentum seen on the road was in 2016, the minister
said.

In the case of the Second Niger Bridge, where one of the
spokespersons of the National Assembly alleged that the fund
provided in the 2016 budget was not spent and had to be returned,
Fashola explained that this showed very stark and worrisome gaps in
the knowledge of the spokesperson about the budget process he was
addressing.

According to him, a budget is not cash, but an approval of
estimates of expenditure to be financed by cash by the Ministry of
Finance.

“The Ministry of Finance has not yet released any cash for the
Second Niger Bridge, so no money was returned,” he stated.

He added that three phases of early works of piling and
foundation were approved and financed by the previous government in
the hope that a concession would finally be made, but this had yet
to happen because the concessionaires had not been able to raise
finance.

Fashola’s statement read in part, “The continuation of early
works IV could not start in May 2016 when the budget was passed
because of high water level in the River Niger in the rainy season.
The contract was only approved by the Federal Executive Council in
the first quarter of 2017 and the contractor is awaiting
payment.”

Dismissing the allegation that his ministry was holding on to
projects that could be funded through Public Private Partnership so
that he could award contracts, Fashola said from day one of his
assumption of office, he made it clear that his priority would be
to finish as many of the several hundreds of projects that the
ministry inherited, which had not been funded for close to three
years.

He said if the spokesperson was in tune with the Public
Procurement Law, he would realise that the minister had no
unilateral power to award such contracts whose values run into
billions of naira.

He observed that all the new projects presented to the Federal
Executive Council for approval were either federal roads requested
by state governments or those put in the budget by the legislators
to service their constituencies.

Fashola said the focus on contracts by the spokesperson was
probably a Freudian slip that revealed his mind-set and interests,
when indeed he should be focused on developmental projects that
would strengthen the economy.

Also responding to the issues that the budget for the Mambilla
Power Project was slashed because it contained N17bn for
Environmental Impact Assessment, the minister said there was indeed
a wrong description of that particular expenditure head, which
could have happened during the classification of so many thousands
of heads in the budget estimates.

According to him, what was described as a budget head for the
EIA was actually the nation’s counterpart funding to the China EXIM
Bank loan to fund the building of the Mambilla power plant.

He added that this was brought to his attention only after it
had been slashed and that if the intention was not to slash
arbitrarily, it should have been brought to his attention earlier
in order for him to offer explanation.

“At a joint meeting convened at the instance of the budget
minister when I complained that the budget was slashed, the issue
of the EIA was brought to my attention and I explained what it was
meant for,” Fashola said.

On the N20bn provision in the ministry’s budget, which the
lawmakers alleged that the minister failed to provide the details,
Fashola said the spokesperson was hiding behind a finger.

He said it was a very basic principle of good planning to make
provisions for unforeseen contingencies, adding that in the 2016
budget, a similar provision enabled the ministry to respond to the
failures of the Tamburawa Bridge in Sokoto, the Ijora Bridge in
Lagos and the Gada Hudu Bridge in Koto Karfe along the Abuja-Lokoja
Expressway.

He added, “Similarly, the ministry was able to pay N1bn to the
contractor handling the Suleja to Minna road. The recent failures
caused by flooding along the Tegina-Mokwa-Jebba road and Tatabu in
Niger State could not have been provided because they were not
foreseen and there may be more. This is what good planning is
about,” Fashola said.