By Ayoni M. Agbabiaka
Minister of the FCT, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, has commended the $15 million Korea Model School being built on the Airport road, via multilateral cooperation between Nigeria and the Korean government.
The minister, who gave the commendation when he received a delegation from the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), led by the Korean Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Noh Kyu-duk, said it was the largest bilateral project between the two countries.
Bello noted that the school when completed would serve as a landmark and would strengthen existing cordial relationship between Nigeria and Korea.
He also praised KOICA for the intended capacity building programme planned for the would-be teachers in that school; saying that it would surely create quality managers whose by-products would positively impact on the development of the country in the future by the time the school comes on stream in 2018.
Bello said the FCT Administration was working at creating a special unit in his office that would communicate directly with all the multilateral agencies and countries that were doing projects on joint venture with the FCTA to smoothen their operations.
The minister, who noted that the geometric rise in Abuja’s population was posing serious challenges in the areas of managing the city’s traffic movements, and others, urged the Korean government to consider the possibility of investing in these areas to deepen its relationship with Nigeria.
He said: “Electricity supply is a huge challenge and we need it for basic security issues like the street lights in the night, traffic lights for interchanges as well as the hospitals and so many other areas.
“I can assure you that any project that any of the Korean companies is interested to do in Abuja to provide power, we are equally interested because power is needed now more than ever in the city for all the public facilities, we get the power from the national grid and it’s not enough.”
The minister said public transportation in FCT had been a challenge, as large number of the buses in the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system had been non-functional.
Speaking earlier, Kyu-duk said the Korean government would build certain parts of the Model School, while the FCT Administration would handle other parts.
He recalled that the electricity situation in the Territory was much better some 20 years ago when KOICA first came to Abuja, but regretted that the agency “is now running on generators at present to sustain its activities.”
“Some of the Korean companies have good experience and technology to build this kind of power plant if the opportunity could be given to us.”
The FCT Permanent Secretary, Dr. Babatope Ajakaiye, and other top officials of the FCT Administration were present.