Bauchi State Government has reiterated its commitment to building additional 4,000 houses to the ongoing 2,500 units as part the Governor Bala Mohammed programme to address the problems of shelter, roads and infrastructures in the state.
The Senior Special Assistant to Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State on Project Monitoring, Alhaji Musa Ahmed Azare, stated this on Thursday in Bauchi when he visited the secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalist (NUJ).
He said “the governor has, in his effort to bridge the shortfall in housing, went out to source for housing project where he got a collaborative support from Family Homes to construct 2,500 houses in strategic LGs of the state and additional 4,000 housing project is coming, also in collaboration with Family Homes.
He noted that the abandoned BASG/World Bank water project in the state has gotten priority attention by the present administration.
While reacting to critics that roads are not what the people of Bauchi need, Musa Azare said, “You see, you cannot stop critics from doing their criticisms, whether right or wrong. However the present administration cones ar a time when Bauchi State is hungry for infrastructural development such as good roads because several communities get completely cut off from other parts of the state once the raining season sets in.
“We also have traders in our remote communities who always come to the local market with their commodities, without access roads, they can’t do that. The economy is driven by such people. How do you ignore their plights to have good access roads”.
Musa Azare said “the present administration met a backlog of pensions and gratuity. In the history of Bauchi State, no Governor has devised ways to solve such issues like Bala Mohammed before now, you have to know somebody to access your gratuity after retirement. Somebody that retired ten years ago cannot get his benefits while somebody who retires just last week can bribe his way to get his benefit. But that ugly trend has now banished, courtesy of the new order of decency and rule of law instituted by this administration”.
SSA project Monitoring lamented that the Bauchi state has been left behind by Gombe State in the area of infrastructural development which the present administration of Bala Mohammed is working tirelessly to close the gap.
He said with the speed at which the Governor is driving the economy of the state, the infrastructural deficit that has bedeviled Bauchi will be closed within four to eight years.
“It is very difficult in our country like ours, and with the nature of our politics, for a governor to unseat someone and continue executing abandoned projects he met on ground”, he said.
“You may recall that the past administration abandoned projects for reasons best known to them. I can tell you that in few years of Bala’s government, these projects are either completed or are nearing completion”, the SSA noted.
“For instance, in Bauchi metropolis, you have the CBN roundabout to federal lowcost/railway road, for which billions of naira had been spent but couldn’t be completed by the past administration, has today been completed by this government”.
Some of the abandoned road projects that have been completed by Governor Bala according to Azare include; Udubo-Gamawa road, Sule Katagum road in Azare, which is about 95 percent completed.
