The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Muhammad Bello, has told the House of Representatives that the planned renovation of the National Assembly Complex is undergoing procurement processes.
Bello made this known in Abuja on Thursday when he appeared before the House Committee on FCT for the 2021 budget defense.
The Federal Government had planned to renovate the building with N37bn in the first version of the 2020 Appropriation Act, a proposal that generated wide condemnations.
The cost had been slashed to N9bn when the national budget was reviewed due to economic considerations.
Bello, while speaking on the 2020 budgetary performance of the FCT also said the nation’s capital had an allocated N62,407,154,360 for infrastructural development activities of the Federal Capital Territory Administration.
Bello said, “The procurement process for the rehabilitation of the National Assembly Complex with the 2020 appropriated sum of N9,250,000,000 has been processed to the Bureau of Public Procurement for appropriate certification, to facilitate the conclusion of the procurement process. We are engaging with the regulator to expedite the process.”
Members of the committee, however, decried the plethora of abandoned projects especially roads in the nation’s capital.
The lawmakers also decried the spate of insecurity in some parts of the FCT, where they said miscreants and criminals had taken over.
Bello, however, stated that appreciable progress had been made in the last five years, especially on the Airport Road, blaming the challenge on the FCT budget, which he said had been brought down from an annual figure of about N180bn to about N90bn last year.
