TheCable

Babatunde Fashola, minister of works and housing, says Globacom Limited will construct the 64 km Ota-Idiroko road in Ogun state by 2022 under the federal government’s tax credit scheme. 

Fashola said this during an inspection tour of the ongoing reconstruction of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway on Wednesday.

In 2019, Muhammadu Buhari signed executive order 7 on Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Scheme into law.

The scheme aims to incentivise private sector participation in the provision of funding for the construction, repair, and maintenance of critical road infrastructure in critical economic areas in Nigeria.

It enables companies with high tax profiles to construct roads in a negotiated agreement with the federal government to provide the infrastructure instead of taxes.

“From Ota to Idiroko, we don’t have a contract there, but Chief Mike Adenuga of Globacom has offered to construct that road using the tax credit system,” Fashola said.

“So, that has also started, they are doing the design and hopefully, by sometime early next year, they should mobilise to site. The real reconstruction is going to happen if we have a deal with Glo.”

The minister added that efforts are being carried out to bring in Flour Mills of Nigeria and Unilever to reconstruct the Badagry link to the Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta road under the tax credit scheme.

Under the scheme, some private companies have signed up, such as Dangote Cement which was awarded N22.32 billion tax credit certificate to construct Apapa-Oworonshoki-Ojota road in Lagos and the Lokoja-Obajana-Kabba road connecting Kogi and Kwara states.

Also, MTN Nigeria announced plans to reconstruct the Enugu-Onitsha expressway under the tax credit scheme.