Posted on: 04:13 Tue, 14 Jun 2016



Babatunde Fashola, minister of
works, power and housing, says he
wants to witness the fulfillment of
the Nigerian promise before he
dies, and this thought keeps him
awake.

Fashola lamented that Nigeria is
currently bedevilled by a number
of challenges, but he vowed to do
his best in tackling them.

“I’m a thinking person and I’m
always looking for solutions to
solutions. When I’ve found one
solution, I’m not always convinced
that it’s the best solution, so even
when I’m implementing it, I’m
looking for ways to make it better,”
he told Channels Television in an
interview aired on Monday.

“Generally, the promise of this
country keeps me awake. I know
that it is a country of so much
promise; I want to see some of
those promises before I die. I want
to see sustainable, reliable
electricity; I want to see more
people get access to electricity.

“I want to see more people pay
mortgages for their own homes. I
want to see roads in this country
smoother… to be more efficient so
that people have more pleasant
journey time. Nigeria is a very
beautiful place.”

He traced that the challenges in the
power sector to 1950 when the first
electricity ordinance was passed.

“We’ve been trying to generate
sustainable energy for 66 years and
I’ve spent 6.5, 7 months. I have
learnt a lot to convince me that the
problems can be solved,” Fashola
added.

“I haven’t visited all the power
plants but I intend to. I intend to
visit all the power facilities so that I
understand what I’m expected to
manage. If I wanted to do that in a
whole month, it wouldn’t be
enough.

“One whole year perhaps wouldn’t
be enough. But every power plant I
go to, every transmission facility I
see, every substation that I visit…

I visited a nuclear manufacturing
plant privately set up a few weeks
ago, everything that I saw
convinced me that it can be done.
The more I see, the more I believe
we can solve it.”

AFFORDABLE HOUSING FOR CIVIL
SERVANTS

Speaking on his housing plans, he
said: “There are many people who
need accommodation.

There are people to build; they just
want land, some people want
duplexes, some want semi-detached
house, some want a flat, one
bedroom, or two bedrooms.

“Those are the people that are most
at risk and those are the people
that should first concern us. So I
think what we should first create is
to connect between what is
available and what is affordable.

“In America, for working people,
affordability means the person
must not spend more than 20-25
percent of his monthly income on
his accommodation and must not
spend more than 40 or 50 percent
of his total income on utilities. So
affordability is not necessarily the
unit cost but the payment mode.

“Affordability, we are looking at
the civil servant as our guide. Civil
servants around level nine to about
level 14/15; that income bracket is
not extrapolated to the private
sector who are the people who earn
this kind of money also I the
private sector; taxi drivers, food
vendors but what is called a
benchmark for the kind of people
who fall within the cadre that we
would be really concerned about in
the short term.