The federal government said yesterday that the 2015 general elections would not affect the ongoing second Niger Bridge as speculated in some quarters.
Addressing State House correspondents in Abuja, Minister of Works, Mr Mike Onolememen, said the work would not suffer any setback because precautions had been taken by government.
He said: “I want to assure you that the second Niger bridge project is a project that has been neatly put together. It has nothing to do with politics. Being a Public/Private Partnership development, even in developed economies, PPP procurement takes longer. We are a developing nation. We don’t have the luxury of time to wait that long.
“We have been able to abridge the process and we have been able to go this far because of some of the ingenious things we introduced so as to quickly deliver it. I want to assure that it is not in the character of this government to play politics with infrastructure development and I want to assure Nigerians that on this project, election or not, this project is on and irreversible.”
The minister also spoke on the Gamboru-Ngala Bridge linking Nigeria to Cameroun which was damaged by suspected Boko Haram insurgents, saying an assessment exercise was being carried out on the bridge to determine the extent of damage.
He said the Bridge Department of the Ministry of Works has been directed to bring a contingency on how to quickly restore the bridge.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Water Resources, Mrs Sarah Ochepe, said more than 70 per cent of both civil and technical work on Kashimbila Dam in Taraba state had been completed.
She said the multi-purpose dam would improve power supply to Benue, Taraba, Adamawa and Cross Rivers states and increase agricultural production and generate over 28,000 employment opportunities.