By Patrick Ahanor
Benin City
The federal government has put together a 30-year National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan, which will bring about accelerated development across the country, the Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Senator Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed, has said.
Under the road map, the sum of N485tr is required to catalyse the provision of infrastructure, power, oil and gas, transportation, housing, water, agriculture and social infrastructure.
Bala, who disclosed this at the convocation ceremony of Igbinedion University, Okada in Edo state, where he was conferred with an honorary doctorate degree, explained that the master plan would “demand the building of a critical mass of capacity approximately 33 million jobs”.
He challenged the nation’s universities to build capacities in the fields geared towards actualisation of the master plan.
Besides, the minister stated that the federal government’s vision for Abuja “is to be one of the best 20 cities in the world by the year 2020”.
According to him, “We have been able to incentised the private sector to take the lead in infrastructure investment in the territory, while the government focuses on policy, human capital development and enabling environment for mutually beneficial partnership.
“Some of the policies include the FCT Land Swap Initiative, which is aimed at the use of land as resource in exchange for infrastructure development.
“Over 10 districts are, therefore, being developed with private funds, secondary investments in the land swap districts which are expected to rise to the tune of over N3trillion and 250,000 new jobs will be created in the next 5 years”, he added.