The minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Elder Godsday Orubebe, yesterday explained why he gave the figure of N193.8billion as the total cost for completing the 338km East-West Road dualisation project, which runs across the coastal areas of the Niger Delta Region.
He explained that the demand for the sum of N193.8bn was necessitated by the realisation that only N21.7billion is to be utilised for the East-West Road project from the Sure-P budget this year. He said that going by these appropriations, it is not likely that these funds will be enough to complete the project as expected by December 2014.
Orubebe made this comment after an interactive session with newsmen Monday on the state of the East-West Road, which is his ministry’s pilot project in the region.
He also pointed out that the inherited inadequacies of work quantities inherent in the original contract of 2006 as a result of the baseline design method used by the Ministry of Works and Julius Berger Construction Company affected all sections of the road project.
These inadequacies, according to the minister, necessitated the production of a detailed design when the Niger Delta Ministry took over project from the Ministry of Works in 2009 and that subsequently shot up the cost.
Giving a breakdown of the how the additional N193.8bn needed for the outright completion of the project by 2014 will be utilised according to the programme of work and cash flow projections for the four sections, he posited, “the additional funds required in 2012 is N34.4bn, while funds required for 2013 will be N86.5bn and funds finally required for 2014 will be N50bn.”