The minister made this revelation while providing clarity on the government’s funding and progress for critical infrastructure projects during a stakeholder engagement meeting on Sunday. The engagement session, held at the Eko Hotel, Lagos, focused on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project and addressed inquiries about recent budget allocations for road and bridge interventions across the country.
He said, “Somebody questioned, saying that we were given 300 billion in 2023 or 2024. But the fact is that in supplementary budget, Mr President saw the plight of the people when he came on board and he saw that a number of our bridges were in shock and a number of the roads were also cut into two and so they directed the ministry to go round and then bring up the palliatives. So we went round and got 260 projects and about 50 bridges intervention. So, totalling all together about 330. The total money came to about 207 billion and that was in 2023 supplementary budget. What that budget could take was 100 billion. 108 billion was passed to 2024 appropriation, so 100 billion was for 2023 and 108 was for 2024. That is still ongoing. The balance of the 200 billion in that supplementary budget was for the curation of new projects under president Bola Ahmed Tinubu and also to enhance the funding of the existing projects.
