Fix your state roads first

Governors of the 36 states last week demanded to take over the construction and management of some federal roads under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement. They said they would invite investors who would use their money, build roads and thereafter recoup investment by collecting tolls at strategic locations. The governors said they would submit […]

Governors of the 36 states last week demanded to take over the construction and management of some federal roads under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement. They said they would invite investors who would use their money, build roads and thereafter recoup investment by collecting tolls at strategic locations. The governors said they would submit a strategic plan to President Muhammadu Buhari that would guide the handover and management process.

Ebonyi State governor Dave Umahi, who briefed reporters at the end of the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting in Abuja, decried the deplorable condition of roads in the country. The situation, he said, was worsening and needs states with capacity to manage them with a view to checking the needless carnage and loss of man-hours on these roads nationwide. Umahi also lamented that the axial load of more than 35 tonnes trucks carrying mostly fuel and other goods was responsible for failing highways nationwide. NEC then directed Minister of Power, Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola to come up with a strategy to regulate the weight of heavy trucks plying the nation’s roads.

Umahi said, “These failures have been agitating our minds and we are soliciting that the Federal Government should give out some of these roads to states to fix through investors and toll them. In view of the number of roads that is being handled by Federal Government, there would be no amount of budget that can fix them.” Nigeria has a total road network of 198,000km. Federal Government has 34,120km of them; 36 state governments control 34,300km while 774 local government councils control 129,580km. Most of these roads have failed and efforts to redeem them haven’t succeeded over the years despite huge budgetary allocations by all tiers of government. In many states, federal roads are far better maintained than state roads, not to mention local government owned Trunk C roads. 

Many reasons cause the roads’ failure, including poor leadership, corruption, lack of a clear roadmap to ensure sustainability, shoddy work by contractors, connivance by work supervisors and lack of political will to hold anyone accountable. We therefore wonder why state governments would mull the idea of taking over federal roads instead of first of all collaborating with the private investors they are talking about to fix their roads first. We recall that on May 24, 2016, Mr Raji Fashola lamented the infrastructural deficit in the country, saying Nigeria only constructed 28,980km out of the 193,200km total length of her road network in 55 years since independence! His Science and Technology counterpart, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, said “over dependence of Nigeria on foreigners in the construction and rehabilitation of existing infrastructure has weakened the country’s capacity to develop technology and acquire necessary skills to strengthen productive capacity as an independent nation.” The duo spoke at the 2016 Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute (NBBRI) international conference. 

It is sad that at every available opportunity, those saddled with the responsibility of developing the country’s infrastructure have shielded themselves from blame and heaped it on others. Nigeria must get its act right because, though we have the longest road network in Africa south of the Sahara, most of the roads are in serious state of disrepair. No matter how much is invested in them, they would not last long until we get other means of transportation right, especially the railways to reduce pressure on our roads. Right now, Nigeria has only 3,500 kilometres of railways. 

It is disingenuous to think of reinventing toll gates to extort money from overburdened motorists before the roads are fixed.  We urge state governments to source for the money and repair the roads first before asking Nigerians to pay tolls. 

Also, there should be weight bridges at strategic locations on the repaired highways to apprehend trucks with excessive luggage; as well as computerized toll gates to stem corruption that characterized earlier toll initiatives.