FG approves N204 million for web-based highway management system

The federal government has approved N204 million for the design and deployment of a web-based management systems for highway.

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved the contract for N203,845,332.50 during its 31st meeting on Wednesday.

The technology will help provide efficiency on the project and improve service delivery.

He said some federal roads are so long that they require five contractors during construction, saying the deployment of ICT will help monitor ongoing projects.

“This is an information and communication technology device being procured by the ministry in order to improve its capacity to monitor not only contract performance, but also maintenance of its roads and to empower not only its 36 controllers in each of the state of the federation but also, the six zonal directors to improve our service delivery,” Mr Fashola told journalists at the State House.

“The importance of deploy ICT now perhaps would be better appreciated when it is understood that we have over 13,000 kilometers of road networks at different stages of construction or rehabilitation as at the close of December 2020. And those 13,000 plus kilometers are manifest in over 700 different contracts.

“I continue to explain this that some of our roads are so long that we have five different contractors. Like the Kano-Maiduguri road for example, we have five different contractors there, Benin to Lokoja, we have five different contractors there and so on and so forth.

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“So we have different contacts to manage and so we are deploying ICT there. Upon full deployment, one of the things you will see is that, citizens will be expected to become 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,” Mr Fashola said.

Also, the council approved the ratification of the emergency roads repair done in Zamfara State in 2016 caused by a heavy rainfall.

He said the contract was awarded under the Public Procurement Act in emergency situations as provisional contracts.

“So we had to go through procurement process, file reports of completion and then come to seek ratification. So, the work had since been completed but the paper work has now led us here. And the ratification was granted today by FEC for N7,923,706,078.86,” the minister said.