The Federal Government, on Thursday, August 18, said it would spend N505.6 billion to complete ongoing 116 water projects across the country.
The government also said outstanding liabilities owed contractors handling some of the projects stood at N88.8billion as at 2015.
Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, who spoke in Abuja during the public presentation of the roadmap for the water sector tagged: Immediate and long term strategies for water sector, 2016 – 2030, promised that the focus was to reform the water sector to meet the demands of Nigerians.
The Minister, who is an engineer, explained that as at 2015, national access to water supply in the country was 69 per cent, adding that 31 per cent or 52.7 million Nigerians still had no access to potable water. The minister lamented that Nigeria’s sanitation condition had continued to decline since 1990.
He said: “It is imperative to change the trend to achieve 100 per cent access to water supply for our citizens by the year 2030 (the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)target year), when the population is estimated to grow to about 257 million.”
Adamu said: “Presently, 31per cent (52.7 million) of Nigerians, mostly in the rural areas, are still without access to portable water supply.”
Adamu noted that some of the contracts that were handled by the ministry had been stalled for up to 15 years.
He said: “A total of 116 projects are ongoing. The total contract cost for these projects is N505.57billion and most of them are at 40 to 60 per cent level of completion. Some of these projects have been stalled for up to 15 years. The total outstanding liabilities for ongoing projects are N88.85billion as at 2015.
“Of this sum, N66.88billion is for the main ministry’s projects while N20.97billion is for River Basin Development Agency projects. The total contractual commitment to completion is N264.99billion and our focus is on prioritisation and completion of ongoing projects.”
The minister said out of the 116 ongoing projects, 38 are for irrigation and water drainage, 37 for dams and 41 for water supply. He said the government would give priority to ongoing projects based on already established criteria.
The criteria, according to him include: stage/time of completion, cost of completion, envisaged impact on citizens and the economy, age of abandonment and overall project viability.
He added that when the projects are completed, 887, 971 direct jobs would be created, and 13.5 million additional populations would be served with potable water.
