The minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola has stated that he doesn’t feel intimidated overseeing the affairs of three pivotal infrastructure providing ministries.
Fashola said this during the inauguraul edition of `Buharimeter’, town hall meeting organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD). He furthered that the Ministry cannot be compared to Lagos state in terms of size which he was able to administer successfully for eight years.
“In terms of the size of my ministry, I don’t think it is bigger than the ministries that I have superintended before. I am much grounded on that level. There are almost 30 ministries in Lagos and about 57 parastatals, and I was involved on a day-to-day basis,” he noted.
He continued that the only difference he noticed was that as a minister he is working with totally different people who he is just meeting for the first time. I also said that there are delays in his work because he had to travel by road in order to confirm some of the things ion record.
“What is different this time is that I am working with a team that I have just met, so and it is taking time to understand everybody. We are having regular meetings. I need to know everybody on beat by name and by face. It’s like playing football, and you don’t know your teammate and you want him to pass, you’ll say ‘O boy pass’, but after a while you know each other by name and you will bond better.
“Also, knowing the assets I am managing, visiting the sites, the power plants, touring the roads by driving rather than flying, and that’s taking some time. I have seen all of it on paper and I don’t think that it is something that has overwhelmed me.
“I have a minister of state who is assisting me. I have a permanent secretary in charge of power, and I have a permanent secretary who is overseeing works and housing because we are in the same place, and I have very, very competent staff.”
He also spoke about the scorecard of the ministry during his past oneyear that he made use of three stages of “incremental, steady and uninterrupted supply” in the power sector
