The House of Representatives, has today, called on the President Bola Tinubu-led administration to revisit all abandoned projects spread across the country for possible completion and putting same into use by Nigerians. The House during the plenary today lamented that successive administrations in the country have left some number of infrastructural projects unattended to.
The debate titled, ‘Need to access and fix abandoned Federal Government projects across the country,’ sponsored by member representing Ijebu North/Ijebu East/Ogun Waterside, Joseph Adegbesan, described the menace as disappointing the abandonment of projects in the country where some contractors has refused to complete some project even after receiving full payment by some of them.
According to the lawmaker, “Available statistics have shown that over 60,000 projects are abandoned in Nigeria, thereby obstructing citizens from utilising their tax proceeds and natural resources, with the total value of these projects reaching trillions of Naira.”
Adegbesan informed his colleagues that those said projects were initiated and designed to improve the quality of life and the standard of living of all Nigerians either through electrification, power improvement, provision of portable water, qualitative education, healthcare facilities, construction of roads and bridges to mention but few.
He said, “Successive administrations have been ignoring these projects on the premise that it was not initiated by their government or not within their policy direction, disregarding their importance to Nigerians and taxpayers’ money spent.”
Meanwhile, the House has mandated its Committee on Works to compile and review all abandoned FG projects littered across the country including the “scope of work, commencement date, contract value, the amount spent, and stage of work through Ministries, Departments and Agencies with a workable plan to effectively complete the projects,” It added.