Major Highlights Of The National Economic Council Meeting In Abuja

The National Economic Council meeting with 36 State Governors and some Ministers, President Bola Tinubu rolled out a kind of Marshall Plan.

The plan captures both hard infrastructure to drive Economic output and accelerate National development and social interventions to bring more relief to households across the country.

Under the National Construction and Household Support Programme which covers all geo-political zones in the country. The Federal Government will fund the Sokoto-Badagry Highway. The highway will traverse Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun, and Lagos.

Other road infrastructure projects, such as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, which is ongoing, and the Trans-Saharan Highway, which links Enugu, Abakaliki, Ogoja, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, and Abuja will get adequate attention.

At the NEC meeting presided over by Vice President Kashim Shettima, President Tinubu also approved full counterpart financing for Port Harcourt-Maiduguri Railway; to traverse Rivers, Abia, Enugu, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe and Borno.

Counterpart funding for the Ibadan-Abuja segment of the Lagos-Kano Standard-Gauge Railway; which will traverse Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Kwara, Niger, Abuja, Kaduna, and Kano was also approved.

The Sokoto-Badagry road project is specially prioritized for its importance as some of the states it will traverse are strategic to the agricultural sustainability of the nation.

Within the Sokoto-Badagry Highway corridor, there are 216 agricultural communities, 58 large and medium dams spread across six states, seven Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZs), 156 local government areas, 39 commercial cities and towns, and over 1 million hectares of arable land.

Other items under the National Construction and Household Support Programme include:

(1) One-off allocation to states and the Federal Capital Territory of N10 billion for the procurement of buses and CNG uplift programme.

(2) Delivery of N50,000 uplift grant each to 100,000 families per state for three (3) months.

(3) Provision for labour unions and civil society organizations.

(4) Deployment of N155 billion for the purchase and sale of assorted foodstuff to be distributed across the nation.