BEVERLY HILLS, May 24, (THEWILL) – The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi on Tuesday appealed to Nigerians to be patient and give the administration more time to achieve its objectives.
He made the appeal while answering questions in Abuja on Tuesday at a forum organised by NAN.
The Minister, who said there was no money to run the government, said the All Progressives Congress (APC) government underestimated the challenges ahead of it.
“We encountered challenges; were we expecting to encounter those challenges? Yes; did we think that we will meet the quantum or volume of those challenges?” he asked.
“We didn’t anticipate that things were this bad. We thought you go to government and there would be money for you to run government and others.
“Now you have the situation where there is no money to run government. I hate to use the word difficult; I hate to use the word impossible but we met things close to difficult and impossibility.
“That is why Nigerians are impatient; they want to see results and for them, change is not about change in structure, it is about change in their pocket.
“Because their pocket is getting dried and they wanted us to put some more resources in their pocket because of the structural changes that we want to put in place is not getting all that they want to get.
“What I usually say to people is that we beg you to give us time; we will achieve our objective if you give us time and we will both thank God for that opportunity.”
He gave an assurance that money recovered from the ongoing corruption fight, would be used to provide infrastructure. According to him, the government has started paying contractors not appointed by the current administration, noting that such action represents service delivery to the people.
He also revealed that the federal government needs over $50.9 billion in the next five years to develop transportation infrastructure.
“We need over 50.9 billion dollars in the next five years to develop infrastructure and 50 billion dollars is not a joke,” he said.
“One of the infrastructure we are trying to develop is the railway infrastructure; the president has kindly agreed that he will fund it because the contract was awarded by Obasanjo, the former president; he awarded the contract for Lagos to Kano.
“President Jonathan awarded the contract for Lagos to Calabar, what the president has agreed to do is to fund it; he said can we fund the ones we have already awarded; no more awards until we have developed the ones we have awarded.
“So we are focusing on the Lagos to Kano railway and the Lagos to Calabar rail line.
“If you look at the communities surrounding this rail line; Lagos to Kano will start from Lagos to Ibadan; it will impact on so many sectors of the economy including housing; people who ordinarily will not be able to pay for house rent in Lagos can live in Ibadan, can live in Ogun and come to work in Lagos.”
Story by David Oputah
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