A pipeline installation to transport dry gas through the North and South corridors to the West corridor has been approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at the cost of N2.5 billion.
The 30-kilometre project, which is operated by Shell and Seplat, has a dollar component of $32m.
It is designed to transport dry gas through the corridors and has a completion period of 18 months.
The approval was one of several memos considered by the FEC in Abuja, during a 10-hour meeting that dragged into the night on Wednesday.
The session, which was presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, ended about 10 pm.
Findings indicated that the FEC members came under pressure to hold the long session in a bid to treat many outstanding memos as the May 29 handover drew nearer.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, said the aim of the pipeline contract, to be executed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, was to ease the movement of gas across the country.
Kachikwu explained, “The significance of this is that the more we can gather gas to feed-stock the pipelines that were built, the easier it will be to create that hop we are looking for to move gas around the corridors of Nigeria, north, south, east and west as the case may be.”
He added that the ministry got another memo approved for the procurement of fire trucks for the headquarters of the Nigerian Content Monitoring Board at the cost of N420m.
The council also looked into the problem of open defecation in the country and the Federal Government’s bid to end it by 2025.
Buhari, as part of the government’s plan, is to launch the “Clean Nigeria, Use The Toilet” campaign to end open defecation by about 47m people in the majority of the country’s 774 local government areas.
The Minister of Water Resources, Mr Suliaman Adamu, while speaking on the issue, said the campaign would be a follow-up to the National Action Plan for Revitalising the Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene, which Buhari had launched in 2018.
As of today, only 10 of the 774 LGAs are free of open defecation, a number the minister described as “dismal.”
