FG Receives Lands From 27 States For Mass Housing

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, disclosed on Monday in Lagos at the opening of the 4^th Commonwealth Public Relations Congress that the Federal Government says it has so far received lands from 27 states and is considering over 500 contracts for mass housing across the country.

The event organized by the Management School, London, and the Business Education Examinations Council, had the theme “Strategic Management of Reputation Risk in an Interdependent World.”

Mohammed, who was briefing the gathering on what the government was doing to better the lots of Nigerians, stressed that government was spending massively in infrastructural development.

“We have a lot to tell Nigerians. Spending our way out of this recession, we are investing massively in roads, railways, power, etc, and creating jobs in the process.”

“Some 200,000 of the 500,000 jobs promised under the N-Power Volunteers Programme will be filled from Dec. 1, 2016.”

“Out of this, N-Power Teach/Community will provide 150,000 jobs, N-Power Agro will provide 30,000 jobs and N-Power Health 20,000 jobs,’’ he said.

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The minister said that the Ministry of Water Resources is ensuring step up irrigation farming to address the challenge of longer depends on rain-fed farming. He also said that the government has re-mobilised contractors back to work on roads across the six geo-political zones.The road, according to him, included the Port Harcourt-Aba Road, Sokoto-Tambuwal- Makera-Kontagara Road, Ilorin-Jebba Road and Shagamu-Ibadan Road.Others were Abriba-Arochukwu-Ohafia Road, Abuja- Airport Road-Lokoja, and Ikot Ekpene Border-Aba-Owerri Dualisation.

He said the government had paid consultants supervising the roads that had been denied payment for years.

“This has helped to recover lost jobs, and put some money back in circulation, as part of a government strategy to build out of this recession.’’

On power, Mohammed said that as at Nov. 5, the nation recorded a peak generation of 4,010 MW, without the 3,000 MW lost to gas pipe vandalism, that would have taken power generation to an unprecedented 7,000MW plus.

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He said work is in progress to repair and restore the damaged gas pipelines, and also to fast-track emergency gas supply to power stations.

The minister said the administration had also boosted its anti-corruption fight with the establishment of the inter-agency Presidential Committee on Asset Recovery (PCAR) to coordinate asset recovery process.

He explained that the committee, headed by the Vice President, is collating and categorizing recovered assets, verifying records and status of physical assets to avoid re-looting.

On insecurity, Mohammed said the administration had achieved a feat that the United Nations, as well as the US, had applauded.

 

Source: The Nation