Umahi: Nigeria Needs N18trn to Fix Its Roads

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

The Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, declared yesterday that the country needed N18trn to tackle its roads infrastructure which the annual provisions in the National Assembly Appropriation Bills would not be able to address.

Umahi stated this yesterday while speaking with journalists after he appeared before the Senate Committee on Works to defend his ministry’s 2025 budget estimates.
He said, “Remember the President inherited 2,064 projects, totaling N13trn in 2023. If you review that project in line with the market realities now, it should be close to N18trn.

“So, when the President, who is an economist, who has gone through all the segments of what we are passing through, by reason of his experiences, and is making efforts to borrow money to do these projects, then the public will be challenging his actions.
“That’s what I have been telling the National Assembly, and we are on the same page now. We have to borrow money to fix the roads.

“The roads, when fixed, are a catalyst to economic growth. It also eliminates hunger. This is because road infrastructure activities create a lot of economic activities.
“Those who are selling sand, chippings, mamaput, rocks, and so on and so forth. There will be a lot of activities. So we need to give attention and encourage Mr. President to borrow money.

“He (President Bola Tinubu) cannot manufacture money. He has to be encouraged.
“You say he’s trying to steal your money. That’s very discouraging. So road infrastructure cannot be fixed by mere yearly budgets. It has to be given plenty of attention.”
Earlier, the Chairman Senate Committee on Works, Mpigi Barinada, noted that Nigeria’s road infrastructure needed huge funds to be effectively addressed.

He said, “We can see that these projects are very enormous and we have to see how we can engage in other ways to get money to see how projects can be delivered to our people.
“Sometimes when people look at the National Assembly asking for projects in their homes it is not because the National Assembly just wanted to do that project in their houses.”

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