The Federal Executive Council presided over by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has approved N38.4bn for the completion of road projects in five states.

The road projects which were inherited from past administrations are located in Anambra, Bayelsa, Benue, Imo, and Nasarawa.

Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, disclosed this while briefing State House Correspondents at the end of Wednesday Council meeting.

Fashola said, “They are not new projects; they are projects that we inherited and we are trying to complete. So, essentially, they relate to cost revision because of the ages of the contracts and the prices of goods that have changed.”

On his part, the Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, said the council approved the sum of N10.7m as augmentation for the completion of the Middle Rima Valley Irrigation Project in Sokoto State.

He said, “The Federal Ministry of Water Resources presented a memo to council for the revised total cost of phase II of the construction of middle river valley irrigation project. That is the completion of the middle Rima valley irrigation project in Goronyo, Sokoto State.

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“This contract was started in 1999 by the military administration then; the first phase was completed, comprising 873 hectares. Phase II was started in 2007 and that is what we have been struggling to complete. It is also an inherited project.

“The total scope of phase two is 404,333 hectares out of which about 80 per cent of the work has been done. So, this memo is seeking a revised cost of the project, with an augmentation of about N10.7m so that we’ll be able to finish the project, hopefully before the expiration of this administration in 2023.”

Adamu said the project had the potential of generating employment for almost 50,000 people as well as enhancing food production.

The minister said out of the Federal Government’s goal to complete 116 inherited projects, 34 had so far been completed.