TheCable

Babatunde Fashola, minister of works and housing, has called for the provision of a contingency fund in the budget to cater for emergency situations such as road collapses.

The minister said this while speaking with reporters at the end of the federal executive council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday.

Yesterday, the Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC) announced that a section of the Lokoja-Kabba federal highway had collapsed.

The agency asked motorists travelling from or to the southwest via the road to take alternative routes.

Speaking on the Lokoja-Kabba road cave-in, Fashola lamented that his ministry was often unable to respond to such failures due to lack of “resources”.

He proposed that a sizable amount of money be set aside as a contingency fund.

“So we’ve been proposing that Nigeria should have an emergency provision in the works budget, but we haven’t been successful enough,” Fashola said.

“There must be a contingency, a sizable sum, because when we see failures, last year, we had a problem like that in Kebbi, where roads were washed away.

“We couldn’t respond because we didn’t have the resources. But we will lean on the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA).

“We’re already talking to FERMA, we are seeing resources that we can deploy. We’re also talking to contractors in the area who we have contracts with, what stabilisation and remedial efforts we will make there because we’re diverting traffic to alternate roads.

“Well, traditionally back in Lagos when I was governor, I think we used to provide about five 5% of our capital expenditure as a contingency fund for emergencies. Something between three and five percent varies across the world.”