The year, 2020, witnessed unprecedented crises occasioned by the
COVID-19 pandemic. How did the ministry of works and housing navigate through
these difficult times?
No doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic has immensely affected the plans
and programmes of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing. There was
reduction of government activities as a result of the total lockdown, and this
has affected execution of projects. But the ministry is still on course, we
have adjusted. We are now working tirelessly to complete and deliver most of
our projects.
What would you say are the specific projects the government has delivered even in the face of COVID-19 pandemic?
First of all, let me make it clear how we go about doing projects. When you talk about completion of projects, you may likely mean completion of a road project which we might differ in thinking. Let me give you example, if a road starts from point A to point B with a distance of say 500 kilometres, you may find three or more different contracts on that road which we refer to as project sections, being handled by different contractors or a single contractor. Because they are different projects, even if we have completed one or two projects on that stretch out of the different projects we usually wait until we complete the remaining parts before we commission the road. Otherwise, we have many projects that have been completed. A typical example is the Kano-Maiduguri road project where we have five contracts handled by five different contractors. Two out of the five contracts are completed and the remaining three have reached advance stage, but we are delaying the inauguration of the completed section until the remaining three sections are completed so that we deliver a pleasurable travel experience and world class facility to our people travelling along that corridor. However, we have not restricted traffic movement on the completed sections||| READ MORE
