The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved $5,403,271 for the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) to procure and instal a data link communication to ease communications between controllers and pilots at airports.
Minister of State for Aviation, Mr. Hadi Sirika, who disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the council meeting in Abuja, said the procurement is for the Kano flight information region.
He said the Kano flight information region comprises of Abuja and Lagos airports.
Also speaking, Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola said the council also approved N800 million for demarcation of land leading to enumeration and resettlement preparatory to construction of the Mambilla Hydro Power Project.
He said nine solid firms already have jobs by the award of the contract, adding that Mambilla would consume 18 million bags of cements and 22,500 trucks.
“Apart from the mining jobs, you need to transport them and you are looking at 900,000 trucks, 42,000 tones of steels that will be required to build this. You can see the economic impact of Mambilla,” he said.
The minister said the council also approved a new maintenance policy that would drive maintenance culture in the country.
He said the National Public Building Maintenance Frameworks is a precursor to the development of a maintenance economy aimed at providing jobs for millions of the nation’s teeming youth currently unemployed.
“We have never developed this type of maintenance economy which we are creating today. With what we have done now, we have started with a National pilot plan for inventory of our national assets and a maintenance procurement manual which will be made available to all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government, nationwide,” he said.
Also speaking, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, said the council approved two memos on contracts for the ministry.
He said: “One was an EPCI contract which is Engineering Procurement Construction and Installation contract for the 12 inch by six inch Opoho Okoho flexible pipelines in OML 119 which is awarded to messrs National Oil Verco completion and MELCURT Nigeria Ltd. It is a consortium of two companies.
“The total contract sum was $3.7 billion. The essence of this was that in 2014, the pipeline with which we were evacuating crude in that area gave way and so production became very marginal, we were operating average of about twenty thousand barrels a day as against about 37 to 40,000 barrels and this contract was therefore to replace that pipeline with a new technological flexible pipeline.
“The last pipeline lasted for only 50 years a lot of corrosive environment in which they operated. It is a nine month contract, when completed we will be able to get back production to 40,000 barrels per day. It is very critical and will generate close to $270 million per annum. So it is very important.
“The second approval was on the Escravos to Lagos gas pipeline phase one for additional unforeseen works in engineering, contract had been given in 2008 and it was about 83 percent complete but additional scope has been added to that pipeline and variation of about $9 million was approved today (yesterday) added to the previous amount which was about N5 billion and $177 one million. With the $9 million added today, the new contract figure comes to about $5,186 billion. That pipeline is so critical; it is what helps us move stranded gas out of the Escravos of Oghara region back into the Escravos Lagos pipeline. It is two months contract.”
