President Muhammadu Buhari will have an easy ride to the presidency in the 2019 general election, Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said.
This is because the Administration has continue to deliver on its campaign promises, the minister posited.
Mohammed made the declaration on Tuesday during an inspection of the section 2 of the dualisation of Ibadan- Ilorin road which covers between Oyo-Ogbomoso road.
The minister noted that government is undertaking projects that impact directly on the lives of the people and this has further ender the administration to the heart of the general populace.
According to him: “There is only one way you can get the electorates to vote for you and that is simply by keeping your promises, delivering your promises and embarking on projects that will touch their lives. And I am confident that our re-election will be easy because either its in terms of infrastructure or in terms of social intervention we are everyday working for the common man in the country”.
“As of today we feed 8.2million primary school students across the country, we have employed a total of 7000 cooks in about 24 states covering 62000 primary schools just in the area of social intervention. Our response to critics is not to exchange banters with them, but by showing them what we have done”.
The funding for the road project the Minister said was accessed through the Sukuk loan, where it was able to draw N100bn, which is divided into 6 equal parts, for the six geopolitical zones in the federation.
He explained that the share for the Southwest region is used to complete the Oyo- Ogbomosho section of the road.
He also stressed that “funding will no longer be a challenge to many of our critical road projects” adding that if at all there is any challenge the N199bn presidential infrastructure fund has been set aside for the benefit of those projects.
“The road is significant in the sense that the average traveller from Lagos or Ibadan to Ilorin cannot see this construction for the singular reason that it is a bypass which will not go through Oyo town. At the time Lagos, Ibadan Ilorin was built the rail was working then so a lot of traffic which we now have on the road used to be by rail but clearly when the rail failed, traffic came back to the road. I am happy that you can see it yourself that it is not a paper project and we are confident we are not going to encounter any funding challenge”.
On his part, the federal controller of works Oyo state, Engineer Omotayo Awosanya said the section 2, of the Ibadan-Ilorin dualisation road was awarded in June 2010 with an initial completion period of 40 months but could not be achieved for lack of funds.
Engr. Omotayo also noted that if funding is sustained the road will be completed between mid and end of next year, as it is 58% completed.
This funding hiccup he however said has become a thing of the pass as work is ongoing as government has paid more than half the contract sum.
He said the contract sum of the project is N47.5bn and that contractors have been paid N26bn so far.
He also noted that about 700 workers have been employed on site.
Speaking on the importance of the road, the Engineer said, “The road is a corridor of the extension of Lagos- Ibadan road and the traffic that is generated in Oyo, going towards the north will pass through this road so the importance of the road cannot be over emphasized”.
Source: The Nation
