TheCable

Babatunde Fashola, minister of works and housing, says the federal government owes 3,504 contractors handling its various housing projects about N69.9 billion.

Fashola disclosed this when he appeared before the joint national assembly committee on housing to defend his ministry’s 2021 budget proposal.

While making his presentation before the committee on Thursday in Abuja, Fashola said capital allocation to the housing sector in the 2021 budget proposal is N76.45 billion, which he said would be grossly inadequate to execute 186 projects across Nigeria.

“The housing sector has outstanding liabilities currently to the tune of N69,909,492,390.76 billion,” Fashola said.

“If we have N69.9 billion outstanding liabilities to contractors, where can a capital budget of N76 billion take us?”

The ministry of works and housing was allocated N404 billion as expenditure for 2021 capital projects, which represents the highest capital allocation in the proposals.

The allocation is double the amount in the 2020 budget, which stood at N202 billion, and was also the highest capital allocation at the time.

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari, in his speech on October 8, during the presentation of the 2021 budget proposal to the national assembly, had said “capital allocation to the works and housing sector is to facilitate the completion of several critical projects in 2021.”