By Amos Tauna
Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai of Northern Nigeria on Tuesday said that the state government is ready to present a master plan of the state.
He said that the public would be given room for possible amendment before final presentation and documentation.
The state government hinted that, some of the contractors who had at one point been awarded projects by the government but failed woefully to deliver such projects have been blacklisted and will never secure any contract again from the state government.
Addressing newsmen on Tuesfay in Kadun as part of activities to mark two years of the governor in office, Commissioner, Budget and Economic Planning, Muhammed Sani Abdullahi said, when finalised, the master plan would serve the state for up to the next 32 years.
According to the commissioner, the master plan would be available for the incoming governments in the state to continue and build upon saying, “With this development, the question of continuity would have been addressed in the state hence giving room for accelerated development.
“We have developed a master plan for Kaduna State. The master plan will be available for the state for the next 32 years that is between 2018 and 2050. It will be available for the incoming governments to continue implementing.
“It did took us time to come up with the master plan but then, we dim it fit to take the pain and do it for the benefit of our dear state. We would have possibly gone farther by now in implementing capital projects had it been this master plan was on ground when we came in two years ago.
“We are calling on our people to come and criticize the document before final documentation. This is another proof that we are transparent in all we do as a responsible government that is determine to take the state to enviable height.”
On the blacklisted contractors the commissioner said, “We have already compiled black list of some contractors who will never get any contract from Kaduna state government again.
“Some of them executed projects awarded them so badly while some of them even ran away with mobilization fee without a trace of the project. For instance we have a bridge awarded to a contractor with all the money paid but the bridge was nowhere to be found. You can see it was that bad.
“We have written warning letters to erring contractors and their failure to respond or give concrete evidence that led to their failure have been referred to appropriate quarters and 11 of them are currently been probed by Economics and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) and I think it will be too early to start mentioning their names.
“All this struggle would have ordinarily took us 12 weeks but we have spent two years trying to put things right because we inherited poorly managed government which we are trying to put together.
“Like I said earlier, all the documents of all we are doing including that of the budget are all available across all the ministries and any interested persons can access them for clarifications.”
