By Joyce Babayeju
The Federal Government has approved N1,173,630,820,594.89 for the procurement of maintenance materials for the Ibadan-Kano standard gauge and the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri narrow gauge rail lines.
The amount also includes printing contracts by the National Examination Council for the 2022 senior school certificate examination.
The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, and his counterpart in the Ministry of Education, Adamu Adamu, revealed this to State House correspondents on Wednesday, shortly after the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Amaechi said, “I have an approval of the cabinet to procure rolling stocks for the operation and maintenance and rolling stocks operational maintenance equipment for the new railway projects corridors in Ibadan to Kano standard gauge and Port Harcourt to Maiduguri narrow gauge rail lines to the tune of N1,168,664,834,021 including 7.5 per cent tax.
“These rolling stocks are essentially the consumables we use to maintain the trains, coaches and locomotives. So the reason for train breakdowns discussed in the cabinet is that we may have run out of rolling stocks. So with this, we will replace all the rolling stock.”
The Minister of Education, Adamu, said the Council approved N4.97bn for printing contracts ahead of the 2022 senior school certificate examinations organised by NECO.
“Today, the memo we presented from the Ministry of Education is a printing contract by NECO for the Senior School Certificate Examination. The beneficiaries are nine contractors and the amount is N4,965,986,573.89. It will be completed in eight weeks. And it is for the printing of sensitive, non-sensitive equipment and other ancillary equipment for the examination,” he said.
On his part, the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, said the Council approved the National Policy on Government Second Level Domain, mandating all government ministries, departments and agencies to migrate from generic website and email domain to the second-level domain under the government top-level domain.
However, when asked about ASUU’s recent nullification of his professorship from the Federal University of Technology Owerri, the minister simply replied, “no comments.”
