The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Works and Housing Alhaji Babangida Ussaini, has promised improved grey areas, including vegetation control on the Abuja-Kaduna road whose construction is ongoing.
Ussaini said this while supervising the progress of work on the Abuja-Kaduna road in Kaduna.
He noted that sustained supervision which he began in 2020 is aimed at ensuring that contractors are up and doing.
“We have seen a lot of progress, some channels have been opened and we also spotted areas we need to improve which include vegetation control. If you notice along the corridors, there are a lot of shrubs and bushes along the way which I think are not safe, especially in this season when people do a lot of bush burning”.
Ussaini also noted that what is usually submitted at the office sometimes, does not correspond with what is on the ground, but however, commended the remarkable progress he has seen physically during the inspections.
He explained that with the bad condition of the Abuja-Kaduna road, caused by the huge volume of traffic, officials are doing patches as palliative measures before the new road would be built.
“After the rainy season, we agreed to patch those areas prone to criminal activities and this is why we are making efforts, and we have already given engineers orders to begin the palliative measures”.
“This is what we have encapsulated today and certainly in the next couple of days you will see changes”, the Perm Sec assured.
The Permanent Secretary further stated that, various commissioning of roads in various parts of the country shows the level of positive progress in road construction across the country.
He reeled out the roads commissioned as three in Azare to Potiskum, noting that on Monday, they would be commissioning Shuarin Azare.
“We have commissioned Sokoto to Tambuwal, Obudu, part of Enugu to Port Harcourt expressway, we will continue to see a lot of commissioning,” he emphasised.
Explaining further, he said the Eastern by-pass project, awarded since 2012 had suffered technical challenges including compensation, right of way, issues of community dislocation and many others.
“From 2015 to date, if you look at the trajectory of the progress, you will discover that there is significant progress and currently, we are almost done with the road works. We are doing the bridges across the Kaduna river”.
“It is an engineering job and the piling work had been completed, we are working on the decking, hopefully at the rate we are working, the road should have been completed but for compensation and relocation”.
“At the rate we are moving, we will beat our 2025 deadline for the Abuja-Kaduna road because section ‘1’ is coming up perfectly and definitely by end of next year, we will complete sections ‘2’ and ‘3’,” he added.
Dominica Nwabufo
