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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Deputy Minority Leader of the House of Representatives,Toby Okechukwu, has charged President Muhammadu Buhari to sign the Road Fund bills pending before him.
Okechukwu stated this, while receiving a delegation from the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) and the Nigerian Society Engineering ( NSE), who visited him at the National Assembly.
The lawmaker said the President’s assent to the bills were crucial, noting that the poor state of road infrastructure would remain unless the issues of roads funding and governance were addressed.
“The other day, I was listening to the Minister and he said they had over N10 trillion liability and N765 billion outstanding certificates on completed jobs. There is no way you can develop growth in this country without dealing with the issue of reforms in the system and those bills are meant to cure that.
“Anybody who tells you that road construction in this country can get to any golden era without Mr. President signing those roads reform bills passed into law by the National Assembly it is joking.
“So, it is our prayer that the Roads Fund Bill and Roads Authority Bill should be paid the deserved attention and assented to by the President”, he stated.
The delegation led by the COREN President, Rabiu Ali, said they were at the National Assembly to to present the letter of Honorary Fellow NSE in recognition of the lawmaker’s contribution to engineering in Nigeria, especially in amending the COREN Act.
Ali said “what you have done for the Nigerian engineering family and profession as a whole can only be imagined. We appreciate it because no one that I know for the thirty something years I have been in practice in engineering has contributed so much to the development of engineering practice in Nigeria like your good self.
“To think of it, you are not an engineer. You are a lawyer by profession. So, we thought and wondered how to show appreciation.
“In COREN, we do no give awards, whether honorary or deserved, or honours. So, we approached our colleagues in NSE. There are 4 grades of membership in NSE. The Fellowship grade is the highest grade of membership, which is usually given to engineers, who have reached a certain level in their areas of practice and of course, non-engineers like you, who have made enormous contributions to the development engineering profession in Nigeria.
“NSE is 64 years today and since then, we have less than 20 honorary fellows of the Society and you are one of those 20 Honorary Fellows. “
