Contractor in charge of the project would return to site in earnest to deliver the national edifice for the good of the citizenry. Photo Credit: Daniel Adejo RN
The Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman has assured Nigerians that the National Library will be completed in 21 months as the nation’s depository.
Professor Mamman stated this on Tuesday when he led the Minister of State for Education, Dr Yusuf Sununu and top officials of the Federal Ministry of Education on an inspection visit to the project site located at Central area, Abuja.
“This project is too important for Nigerians and we have this project uncompleted for close to 20 years. We know the importance of a library not to talk about a national library,” he remarked.
“So, the decision is that we have a president who does not tolerate uncompleted projects anywhere. So, everyone involved must come back to site.”
When asked about the full cost of completing the project, the minister declined to comment on the matter, saying only that there were issues surrounding the project, and urging “everyone involved” to come together to review the cost.
“There are some issues here and there but the project will be completed in about 21 months.”But we are urging construction company to deliver the project earlier because we’ve dragged it for too long and the project is too important for it to be dragged any further.”
Professor Chinwe Anunobi bemoaned the “bureaucratic bottlenecks” which have hindered the completion of the project since it was awarded in 2006.
She assured the country that work would commence immediately, saying that monitoring would be followed by meetings of stakeholders involved in the project.
Reporting by Daniel Adejo; Editing by Hadiza Abdulrahman, Julian Osamoto and Tony Okerafor