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Osinbajo: FG delivering 780.15km road projects through PPP

The Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has said that the Federal Government has adopted Public- Private Partnership (PPP) cost effective measures to deliver 19 road projects totalling 780.15 kilometres across the six geo-political zones of the country.

In a statement made available to newsmen by his spokesman, Laolu Akande, Osinbajo disclosed this yesterday at a webinar on Public-Private Partnerships organised by the law firm of Yusuf O. Ali & Co in collaboration with the Business Law Department of the Faculty of Law, University of Ilorin. According to him, “In 2017, we introduced the RoadTrust Fund (RTF). The fund is a tax credit scheme to incentivise private sector participation in the development of federal road infrastructure.

The relief is enjoyed by a deduction of 50 per cent of the amount spent on the project from the income tax that would have been payable by the company.” The vice-president also referred to Executive Order No. 007 of 2019, the Companies Income Tax (Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Scheme). The road projects being undertaken by private companies and now advancing to completion include the reconstruction of Apapa-Oshodi- Oworonshoki-Ojota Road in Lagos State (34 km) by Dangote Industries Limited; the reconstruction of Obajana-Kabba Road in Kogi State (43km) by Dangote Industries Limited and the construction of Bodo- Bonny Road and Bridges across Opobo Channel in Rivers State (38km) by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited.

The vice-president said: “The objective of the scheme is to accelerate public road infrastructure development by incentivising private sector entities to construct and refurbish eligible roads across the country in exchange for tax credits, which could then be applied against company income tax payable.”

Continuing, Osinbajo said the 19 roads approved by the President totalling 780.15km were in eleven states across the six geo-political zones and were being executed by six private sector players in the manufacturing and construction industries. The vice-president said the option of the PPP arrangement had become inevitable because public revenues, both for states and the federal government, had fallen precipitously in the wake of the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic

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