Abuja: The Minister of State for Works, Mr Bello Goronyo, has expressed concern over acts of sabotage along the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano highway project.
Goronyo, while inspecting the road project on Saturday, urged community leaders to caution the residents against such obnoxious acts.
According to him, the contractor is entirely on site, working tirelessly, and the road is turning out to be beautiful.
Goronyo decried, “Maintenance means a lot. Preventing road abuse is part of effective road maintenance.
“Particularly, we have noticed even along this corridor that people go overnight and begin to break some of the road infrastructure and remove iron roads.
“We have noticed that even on completed projects along the Jaji bridge in Kaduna, where some hoodlums (Baba Bola, Iron condemned) went through the bridge to remove iron roads.
“On this one, you can notice some people are drying their grains, they are dumping refuse, and they are also breaking our roads to pass some cables.”
Goronyo condemned the act and appealed to the community leaders along that route to caution their people to do as much as possible to keep the road in good condition.
This, he said, was necessary because the Federal Government had made considerable investments in the infrastructure and had made a commitment to completing the project.
“The importance of a well-maintained road cannot be overemphasised because it provides safer travels, reduces travel times, prevents accidents and even enhances security itself.
“You can see that from the day we started, there has been a significant reduction in cases of insecurity along this road.
“So we want to employ the commuters, the community leaders to please support us, support the administration of Bola Tinubu so that our roads will be better, well-maintained so that we can continue to benefit and then use them for a longer period of time,” he said.
Goronyo expressed satisfaction at the rate of work being done.
Additionally, Clement Ogbuagu, Director of Federal Highways at the Federal Ministry of Works, stated that the inspection team has reviewed all stages of work on the project, which is encouraging.
According to Ogbuagu, the contractor is not doing badly, adding that they have progressed very well.
He said, “We have been on them to meet up with the timetable that we gave them that we agreed on.
“We are telling Nigerians and the world at large that we are not sleeping, we are not resting on our oars on this road because this road is so important to Mr President.
“We in the Federal Ministry of Works know the importance of this road, and we are employing every necessary effort to make sure that this road is delivered and delivered on time.”