Nigerian Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola
It is commonly said in Nigeria it is not that projects are not being awarded but they are either not being executed or that they are done poorly to the detriment of the everyday user. Besides the Power sector, the Works (road) sub-sector is one of the worst hit. Some stakeholders had advocated a project monitoring system within the Federal Ministry of Works to stem the poor delivery of awarded contracts but now it looks like this is finally happening.
The Nigeria government on Wednesday said it has now approved N204 Million for purchase of a web-based management system that will be used to monitor the award and delivery of Federal road projects across Nigeria. This will allow for a citizen participation in the award of road contracts going forward by being able to report the status of work at each construction phase giving the project monitoring team the opportunity to verify each complaint.
The online administration framework is a data and specialized gadget whenever conveyed will empower residents the chance to give an appraisal report of agreement execution of different activities.
Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, says the gadget is being obtained by the service to improve its ability to screen contract execution, yet in addition maintenance of its road network. It will likewise engage 36 controllers in each of the States of Nigeria to effectively monitor, query when necessary and see that awarded contracts are done to specification.
According to Fashola, there are over 13,000Km of road network in the Federal system alone and human monitoring alone can no longer cut it as is done in other parts of the world. ICT is now being introduced to improve their overall performance.
He said, “We have different contracts to manage, so we are deploying ICT. Upon full deployment, one of the things you will see is that citizens will be expected to become an army of reporters providing us with information so that we can respond more quickly, because this will be a web based reporting and monitoring system.”
What the gadget or system looks like exactly is yet to be seen but when we learn more about it, we will bring it to you.
