Nigeria’s minister of Power, Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola says the country has begun implementing infrastructural roadmaps as it seeks to move its economy away from a recession.

He was speaking at the Wilson Centre in Washington DC, USA, while presenting a paper on ‘Leadership and Politics of Reform in Africa: Lessons from Nigeria.’

Nigeria is currently in a recession after official Data from the country’s bureau of statistic showed that its gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 2.06 percent in the second quarter, sending Africa’s biggest economy into a recession after a decline in the first quarter.

Fashola said the immediate and long-term solution to the problem of economic recession lay in massive investment in infrastructure, which, according to him, has already commenced.

He said, “We have to build roads that evacuate our sea and airports, roads that drive our energy for now, roads that go to the tank farms to evacuate fuel from South to North and roads that sustain us, that is roads that bring in our feed stock, cattle and vegetables and livestock from the North down to the South.

“That is why you see us building from Lagos-Ibadan road to Ilorin, to Jebba to link all the way to Kaduna and Kano and go on up North. And we are doing the same thing trying to connect River Benue through the Loko- Oweto Bridge and the Second Niger Bridge; Kano-Kaduna, Kano-Maiduguri. Those are the choices we have made , because this is a period of hard choices trying to do more with less.”

In the Housing Sector, Fashola said the roadmap comprised the designing of houses that would respond to the diverse cultures and climatic conditions of the citizens living in the six geopolitical zones of the country.

While in the power sector, Fashola revealed that government had begun plans to improve power supply across the country.

He listed some of the projects currently being implemented to increase power to include the 450MW Azura Power Plant in Edo State, the 700MW Zungeru Hydro Power Plant in Niger State, the Gurara Hydro Power Plant in Kaduna, the Kashimbilla Plant and the 115MW Kaduna Plant.

The Minister also listed areas where transmission expansion projects are currently ongoing to strengthen transmission to include the Eastern Axis where the Ikot-Ekpene – Alaoji Transmission project takes off up to Enugu.

Nigeria was last in a recession, for less than a year, in 1991, and experienced a prolonged one that started in 1982 and last until 1984.

The government has so far disbursed more than 700 billion naira in capital expenditure this year, part of a record 6.06 trillion naira ($30 billion) budget for 2016. (TV360 Nigeria)

•Photo shows Fashola.

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