The Minister of Works, David Umahi on Monday claimed that the National Assembly withheld N650 million met for road projects in the country.

According to Umahi, the projects were almost completed but the lack of funds is keeping the contractors on site.

The former governor of Ebonyi State during a press conference called on the lawmakers to release funds.

He further stated that the way Nigeria’s budgetary allocation was designed is not encouraging for contractors to complete road projects.

The minister noted that the release of funds to contractors on an annual basis made road projects linger as in most cases.

He said, “When you give a contractor N150m a year for N600m road project, he’ll pocket it while mobilising to the site without doing anything on the ground. When confronted, he’ll say he’s yet to get the material he requested for outside the country as the money was not enough.”

He encouraged Nigerians to plant cash crops across road corridors to prevent kidnappings.

Umahi said, “Nigerians must get value for their taxes, the road is everything, where we are having kidnapping is on the spot where roads are bad, we should remove the bushes and plant cash crop, it is ideal and acceptable and we should replicate it in all parts of the country. It’ll remove the kidnappings.”

Umahi said the construction of concrete roads would not be enforced on projects awarded already.

He, however, said contractors would need to give assurance that roads built with asphalt would last up to 30 years even though the concrete roads would last longer.

The Minister added, “We are not stopping asphalt works but it is not possible to be paying the job that we know will not stand for five years. Contractors hide under the funny excuse of overloading for the road not standing long.”

He said the operations of the Federal Road Management Agency would be reviewed to “ensure that any intervention in states would be done with the input of the state government to know the roads with top priority.”