Bank secures additional fund for Lagos-Ibadan road project

The Infrastructure Bank (TIB) Plc has secured additional fund from financiers for the N167 billion Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

The bank’s managing director, Adekunle Oyinloye, who stated this in Abuja at the end of the financial institution’s board meeting, said the new fund would be in addition to the initial N50 billion raised for the project, even as he was silent over the amount of the new secured fund.

Oyinloye however, affirmed that the highway shall be completed “in due course,” stressing that “when the legal issues surrounding the project were resolved, construction work which had reached 30 per cent completion stage, would resume in earnest.”

He said that all the stakeholders on the project, including the Federal Ministry of Works, the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) and the contractors – Julius Berger PLC and RCC – were determined to ensure its completion by the July 2017 scheduled date.

Oyinloye commended the perception of the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, on the state of infrastructure in Nigeria and the concept of Public Private Partnership in rescuing them from decay.

The managing director stressed that TIB has a clear mission of transforming Nigeria’s infrastructure for enhanced national productivity by interfacing between the market for the public sector lending and private sector infrastructure project financing.

He also disclosed that the bank was working on the design of a new 280-kilometre ‘’green-field dual carriage way’’ that will link Abuja with Ibadan through Kwara State.

Oyinloye said that the bank had secured the Federal Ministry of Work’s ‘’no objection’’ to develop the planned ‘’green-field’’ dual carriage way which, he said, will reduce travelling time from the present ten hours to five hours.

In addition, he said that the road project will generate thousands of job opportunities and unlock the economic potentials of the corridor.

The managing director said that TIB was driving development projects in the nation’s six geo-political zones, citing as an example the Yola Cattle International Market which it fully financed and which loan had been fully repaid by the Yola Local Government.

Oyinloye also said that the bank provided the ‘’catalyst loan’’ for the development of a 20,000 mass housing units for federal paramilitary forces and was actively involved in the $1 billion renewable energy project in the 19 Northern states and the $2 billion 37-kilometre Alagbado – Marina Lagos red-line rail project.