Plateau Governor vows to complete all projects before leaving office

Gov. Simon Lalong of Plateau has said that he hates hearing about abandoned projects and would strive to complete all projects he initiated and some inherited ones before leaving office.

Lalong stated this on Saturday while interacting with journalists after a media tour of ongoing projects in the state.

The governor said that he sees it a waste when an administration leaves uncompleted projects and succeeding administrations’ abandon the projects in the name of politics.

“In our vision we said that if projects initiated by the previous administration are viable and is going to be useful to the people, we will continue and complete the project.

“Today we are using the new government house, I didn’t start the project but I completed it and the people of Plateau are using it.

”We have so far completed some abandoned projects and we are going to complete more of them because I hate hearing about abandoned projects,’’ he emphasized.

On his legacy projects that were mainly in health and education sectors, Lalong assured that he would complete the 46 projects.

The governor said that due to paucity of funds, the scope of the legacy projects was scaled down from N50 to N30 billion to enable the state government complete them.

“We went to the capital market, got the money needed to complete the projects and we told the contractor that he must finish the projects in time.

“We realize that the contractor is slow and we have issued him a notice of termination and you will see what will happen in the next three months,’’ he assured.

Lalong also assured journalists that the contractor handling the remodelling of NUJ Secretariat Jos would return to site before the end of March to complete the project.

Mr Dan Manjang, Commissioner for Information and Communication, said that the initiative to conduct journalists round ongoing projects was to enable them see and assess what government was doing in the area of infrastructure development.

Manjang thanked journalists for the support given to the state government so far.

Mr Paul Jatau, Chairman, Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Plateau Council commended the state government for the initiative, stating that the tour afforded journalists the opportunity to see things for themselves.

Jatau however, called on government official to avail journalists with valuable information whenever they come calling to avoid speculation.

Ime N