Tackling the road sector challenges

As of now Nigerian roads have been described as death traps and have become a nightmare to many Nigerians. Most of these roads are in dire need of rehabilitations, construction and expansion.The Federal Ministry of Works as the ministry saddled with the responsibility of road construction and maintenance in the country is confronted with the […]

As of now Nigerian roads have been described as death traps and have become a nightmare to many Nigerians. Most of these roads are in dire need of rehabilitations, construction and expansion.
The Federal Ministry of Works as the ministry saddled with the responsibility of road construction and maintenance in the country is confronted with the great task of fixing major arterial roads across the country.
President Gooodluck Jonathan on assumption of office promised Nigerians that an efficient and affordable transport system will remain his priority.
The president was quoted to have said, “Our transformation agenda in the road sector which seeks to deliver better and safer roads to Nigerians, as well as to link the six geo-political zones in the country with dual carriage ways is very much on course.”
Many Nigerians have been calling for the construction of Abuja-Lokoja road, Kano-Maiduguri road, Benin-Ore-Shagamu expressway, the Onitsha-Enugu expressway and the Loko-Oweto bridge, across the River Benue.
Others are Yola-Numan raod, Aba-Owerri road, Owerri-Onisha expressway, Oyo-Ogbomosho old road, and the Gombe-Potiskum road.
 The Minister of Works, Mr Mike Onolememen recently said Nigeria needs N500 billion annually for four years to have a sustainable road network.
According to him, inadequate funds continue to be the major challenge faced by the ministry of works and this has led to the slow pace of some arterial roads projects.
“There are some arterial roads that are affected by the lack of the required funds. If you ask me, for us to be able to drive these roads to the level Nigerians want, we need to be investing about N500 billion in road development in the ministry of works every year in the next four years.
“A situation where what we get is not up to N100 billion, you can imagine the predicament we have sometimes and we have to prioritise,” he said.
According to Onolememen, the budgetary allocation alone is not enough to stimulate the road development that would sustain the economy of the nation. He said that is why it is mandatory for every country to have a special fund set aside for infrastructural development.
“That was what the National Development Plans were doing in the post-independent era and that was why they succeeded the way they did.
He said the reform in the road sector will be exploited to woo public private partnership investment into the sector.
The minister said the SURE-P is a blessing to infrastructure development in Nigeria because it has helped in scaling up road projects in the country since its introduction.
He said that the ministry was able to upscale construction work from the Abuja-Lokoja way from the 18 percent it met the project to about 72 percent as at December 2013.
He added that the Benin-Ore road alignment has been fully completed while the Sagamu to Ajebandele road has been awarded for asphalt overlaying through SURE-P funding.
He said about N10 billion to N12 billion has gone to the road sector and this has helped to award the contract for the construction of Oweto bridge in Benue State and the second Niger bridge.
Onolememen said no road project is abandoned or forgotten as the ministry is working with the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) to ensure that roads are put in good shape especially the Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road.  
Toll gates to return
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo  scrapped toll gates on highways nation-wide, saying  they had outlived their usefulness.  Obasanjo said the N63 million which the toll gates generated daily was small even as he said that the gates constituted inconvenience to motorists and encouraged corruption.
He said the toll gates had been known to record serious vehicular accidents while portions of roads near many of them were full of pot holes.
The president assured that proceeds from the petroleum tax of N1.50k per litre would be used to improve federal roads in the country.
However in a twist of policy, Minister of Works Onolememen said as a way of maintaining roads in Nigeria, the federal government is set to reintroduce toll gates and weigh bridges. He however said the toll will be applied to only roads constructed with private sector funds as the federal government had taken cognizance of the need for private sector funding in road development.
According to him, the ministry has adopted a new paradigm for funding road development in Nigeria. This, he said includes off-budget sources such as funding from multilateral agencies through concessional loans, public private partnership scheme and raising road bonds through the debt management office for the development of economic roads.
“What that means is that if you are going to source private sector funds to apply in road development project, it is inevitable that you have to toll such projects in order for the investment to be recouped. That is the only way; it is the rule all over the world.
Onolememen recalled that the ministry had earlier organised a conference aimed at preparing the minds of Nigerians for toll and it was discovered that Nigerians are willing to pay for good services.
He said government has already shared the green paper on the new federal tolling policy to create awareness for road users.
The minister said construction of weigh bridges on Nigerian roads will soon be completed as the ministry had begun the distribution of such bridges since 2012.
“The objective is to ensure that we control axle loading on our roads because one of the major effects of these vehicles is that they destroy our roads. Our roads are designed to take 40-ton-vehicles but today we have 80 tons, 60 tons, 70 tons plying our roads.
“Controlling axle loading on our roads was weakened since the dismantling of the toll plaza because the toll plazas on most of these dual carriage roads provided an opportunity to bring every vehicle to a stop.
“You could better administer the trucks because they had their lane and in the truck lane, we had embedded these weighing bridges on those lanes so there was no escaping it.
“In the whole of West Africa, the menace of axle loading is worse in Nigeria; so we are committed to tackling that,” he said.
He said that the ministry will be working closely with the Federal Road Safety Commission and security agencies in order to enforce compliance.
He added that the ministry had gone ahead to engage the heavy users such as cement manufacturers, steel billet companies, and asphalt companies so that overloading could be tackled from the source.