The
Federal Executive Council, FEC, yesterday, approved contracts worth
N59.8 billion for rehabilitation of the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) Parliamentary building, the construction of the
Mambila Hydro Electricity Dam projects and road construction.
Minister
of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, after the meeting, told correspondents
that the contracts were under the Ministries of the Federal Capital
Territory, Niger Delta Affairs and Power.
“The contracts
approval were in addition to the approval of a loan of $77 million
(about N12 billion) for water projects in Lagos and Cross River states
to facilitate access to water in a number of cities and towns in the
states.”
Mr Labaran Maku accompanied by The Minister of
Communications Technology, Niger Delta Affairs and Minister of states
for the FCT mentioned, the construction of a 23-kilometre
Sagbemi-Kiribo-Gada-Egbekigbo in Ondo State at the cost of N3.555
billion with completion period of 24 months and the augmentation on the
contract for the Ibadan-Illorin road at a cost of N444 million as some
of the contracts awarded yesterday.
He also mentioned the
approval for the complete rehabilitation of the ECOWAS Parliamentary
building in Abuja at the cost of N3.3 billion.
Other
decisions were the signing of a memorandum of understanding with two
Chinese companies for the construction of the Mambila and Zungeru hydro
electricity dams, which would be on the basis of build, operate and
transfer with the Federal Government contributing 25 per cent equity
share for the Zungeru dam and the extension of service lanes from
kilometre zero on the Niger bridge at Onitsha to kilometre one at a cost
of N2.393 billion.
On loan for water projects in Lagos, C-River
On
the proposed loan for water projects in Lagos and Cross River, Maku
said the loan is being given on concessionary ground to these two states
to rehabilitate urban water works, adding that $43.92 million will go
to Cross River, while Lagos will get $33.83 million.
He said, “In
the case of Lagos, the loan has been granted to enable the Lagos State
government improve the quality of water treated for public supply. Work
is ongoing and this is a very strategic loan for a large city like
Lagos.”
“In the case of Cross River State, the loan is to
facilitate access to water through a network of supply to a number of
cities and towns in the state. However, the first is to extend water
supply in the Calabar metropolitan area to ensure that all people living
within Calabar have access to clean water through the public tap
system.”
The Minister of Information and Communications
Technology, Omobolaji Johnson, during the briefing said government had
taken measures to check the poor service delivery by Telecom Service
providers.
According to her, “the pace at which operators
have been investing in expansion, modernization, and upgrade of their
infrastructure to cope with the demand for voice, data, and SMS
services. The second reason is the promotions that we are seeing by the
operators that are causing the degradation of the networks, promotions
that ask subscribers to come back, promotions that promise cars, houses,
and aero planes.”
She mentioned flood, attacks on the
system and promotional activities as the main causes, adding, “We have
been in discussions with the network operators, the NCC, and we are
working to improve the quality of service.”
“In the coming
days, NCC would curtail or stop all promotions that either increase
subscribers’ base that are the subscribers’ minutes or add to the
subscriber base that are causing additional congestion on the network.
The second thing we are looking at is if you recall we did fine the
operators based on their not meeting the quality of service status and
we did worked with them after the fines and we agreed the term upon
which they would upgrade their infrastructure and meet the new quality
of service indicators. We also agreed that in December, we would do
another detailed review of the quality of service indicator and any
network operator that is found wanting will be appropriately sanctioned
by the regulator.
I think now given the poor quality of
service people are experiencing, we are not ruling out some kind of
consumer compensation. We understand and feel the pains of Nigerians
when you tried to make calls and you cannot make them.”
“The
third thing we are doing is talking to our state governors, federal and
state ministries, and agencies that inadvertently are creating bottle
necks in the roll out of this infrastructure. It is a demand a supply
issue and where we do not have large enough infrastructures for the
large population we have today. There a number of things such as
procurement of rights of way, permits to build base stations that are
taking too long and are costing too much. We are working the state
governors, we have preliminary briefed to the National Economic Council,
NEC, and we have begun to work with them to reduce all the bottlenecks
in the roll out of infrastructure.
“Over the last one week
or so you have been getting SMS when you make a call or send and SMS.
This is a measures introduced by the NCC in an effort to increase the
transparency in the billing irregularities that our network operators
sometimes do. Therefore, you can actually keep track of what is coming
out of the pay as you go or if you are on contract how much exactly you
are spending.
“we will start the live testing of our
number portability in December and we will go live on a number of
portability in the first quarter of next year and that will give
Nigerian the ability to move networks according to their preferences,
which of the network they prefer based on the quality of the service
they are offering . I think it is important to also say that we are
encouraging investments into the development of our ICT infrastructure.”
After
the meeting the Information minister, Labaran Maku said the
concessionary loan from a France agency will fund ongoing urban water
projects in the two states.
He said $43.9 million (N6.8bn) will go to Cross River and $33.8 million (about N5.2bn) to Lagos state.
Maku
said, “The loan is to facilitate access to water in a number cities and
towns in the states. In Cross River, the loan will be used to provide
water supply in Calabar metropolis, it will also cover Ogoja, Ikom, and
Obudu.”
The minister of state for Power, Zainab Kuchi on
her part had this to say, “We have agreed with the consortium handling
the projects to complete work by 2014 so that the president can
commission them by the first quarter of 2015. The Mambila dam is to be
built operate and transfer by Messrs Sino hydro while government is to
provide 25 percent for Zungeru dam which is $309 million (about N49
billion).”
On his part, the minister of state for
FCT, Olajumoke Akinjide said N3.3 billion was approved for the
rehabilitation work at the ECOWAS parliament building.
FEC
also approved N2.3 billion for expansion work on the service lane of
the Niger Bridge at Onitsha, N444 million for completion of the
Ibadan-Oyo section of the Ilorin-Ibadan expressway, he said.
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