Members of the Kwara and Niger State Houses of Assembly have called on the Federal Government to include the completion of the deplorable Ilorin-Jebba highway in the 2016 budget.

This, they said, would address the hardships and danger users of the road were being exposed to.

They noted with displeasure that the deplorable state of the highway linking the North and southern parts of the country had led to the death of many people.

They stated that it had also crippled socio- economic activities of the people in the area, adding that no road had been as bad as the highway in the country.

The Kwara Speaker, Dr. Ali Ahmad, and his Niger State counterpart, Alhaji Ahmed Marafa, spoke in Jebba when they led the legislators of the two Houses of Assembly on a visit to the highway.

Ahmad lamented that many federal roads in Kwara State were in deplorable condition. He said the state had been cut off from other parts of the country due to the bad roads linking the state with other states.

He appealed to the Federal Government to urgently fix the highway and other federal roads in the state to fast-track the socio-economic development of the state. Marafa, who is also the Chairman of the Northern Speakers' Forum, described the state of the road as critical.

He recalled the resolutions of the State House of Assembly on December 10 2015, calling on the Federal Government to take an immediate action in dualising the Ilorin-Jebba highway in particular and to rehabilitate other federal roads in Niger State.

The Controller, Federal Ministry of Works for Kwara State, Mr. Omotayo Awosanya, said the 96km highway rehabilitation project was awarded to CGC Nigeria Limited at N14.5bn in December 2013. He stated that N1bn was paid as part of payment of N2bn mobilisation fee.

According to him, the contractor handling the project has abandoned the project due to non-payment of the remaining N1bn mobilisation fee. He stated that the development was sequel to a zero allocation for the project in the 2015 budget.