Nigerian roads are in a very deplorable state. The road network which stands at a scant 195, 000 kilometers keeps many parts of the country practically inaccessible.
The poor road network is partially responsible for the high food inflation rate in the land.
Food items harvested in the inaccessible rural communities rot away because the peasant farmers could not haul them to urban areas where the teeming population is. Bad roads, and in extreme circumstances, utter lack of roads, starve the urban communities of the proceeds of the bumper harvest in the inaccessible rural areas.
Those who toil to meander their way to the rural farming communities to haul the food items through difficult terrain to the urban areas sell them at three times the price they bought them.
Besides fueling food inflation, Nigeria’s deplorable roads cut the life span of vehicles by half. Cars that were built in the 1990s enter Nigeria’s used car market looking almost new. They simply become scraps within six months of scattering through the craters on Nigerian roads. That doubles the cost of vehicle maintenance and drills holes into the pockets of motorists. Transporters respond to the high cost of vehicle maintenance caused by bad roads by doubling transport fares.
The state of Nigerian roads is a source of concern to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It warned last week that Nigeria needs to invest $100 billion (about N40 trillion) in the next 10 years on road construction to open up the country.
The IMF believes that Nigeria needs 180, 000 kilometers of new roads to ease access to remote parts of the federation. Besides the construction of new roads, the IMF argues that Nigeria needs a minimum of $2 billion annually (about N720 billion) to maintain existing roads which are in very bad shape.
The federal government has practically abandoned maintenance of federal highways which amounts to 32, 000 kilometers of road network. The Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), the agency responsible for federal road maintenance is nowhere to be found.
There were speculations last year that the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the agency regulating the prices of petroleum products, was billed to transfer N800 billion to FERMA for the maintenance of federal roads, but the agency failed to do so. No one could account for the money.
The consequence of the scam is that FERMA has no budget for its functions and the agency has simply abandoned federal roads for PPPRA.
Lagos-Abeokuta highway, a dual carriage way leading to the ECOWAS sub-region is so bad that on some frenzied days the two-kilometer journey from Sango Ota to the demolished toll gate at the boundary between Lagos and Ogun State could take one endless hour.
The situation is practically the same in every part of the country with the east seemingly suffering a disproportionate fraction of the federal neglect. In the whole of Abia, Akwa Ibom and Cross River states, there is no federal dual carriage way. The Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road that links Abia and Akwa Ibom states is now the only access road between the two states and Lagos as the Ikot Ekpene-Aba road is in an advanced stage of disrepair.
The Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road which now takes the heat from the failed Aba-Ikot Ekpene road remains the single carriage way it was in 1966 when Umuahia was a provincial headquarters. The road is so narrow and deplorable that once an articulated truck balances on it, every vehicle crawls behind it for kilometers until they could find a spot to slip through.
The federal government is just beginning work at snail speed on the dualisation of the abandoned Calabar-Ikot Ekpene highway. When the dualisation of the highway is finally completed it would go down in history as the first federal dual carriage way in Cross River and Akwa Ibom states. That is how bad the road network in Nigeria has been.
The federal government had all along shunned clarion calls at home and abroad for it to involve private sector investors in infrastructure development. In the last five years the government has been funding infrastructure development through massive loans now choking its lean resources.
Last week, the federal government however jolted frustrated Nigerian motorists and public transport users with the announcement that it plans to rehabilitate 10 major highways through private sector participation.
Babatunde Fashola, the minister of works told the National Assembly that the first phase of the project would involve an investment of N163.32 billion which would be used to upgrade the roads, build toll gates and recreation centres on them. Fashola said the project would create 23, 322 jobs.
That good news would however bring back the toll gates which were demolished in 2005 at the colossal sum of N300 million on the orders of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
However, now that it has dawned on the government that this is the right path to follow, appropriate steps must be taken to protect the interest of the public and the private investors in the new venture.
Government’s policy somersault must not endanger the money of the private investors. The private investments would be protected if the government ensures that the new venture transcends its policy coverage which could easily be reversed by successive administrations.
Government must therefore back up the new arrangement with an act of parliament which could only be reversed through a long and cumbersome process which successive governments might find it too expensive to embark upon.
Besides, public interest must be protected with concrete arrangements enshrined in unambiguous agreements. The raging legal battle over the agreement between the federal government and the concessionaire in the second terminal of the domestic wing of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MM2), in Lagos is a sad reminder of a private sector involvement gone awry. No one knows when the terminal would be handed over to the federal government as the investor shifts the goal posts repeatedly while the ball is in flight.
The cost of the proposed road rehabilitation must be fixed transparently. The IMF believes that one could hack out a new road from a virgin forest in Nigeria at the cost of $500, 000 per kilometer. That is N180 million at the official exchange rate of N360 to the dollar.
Ironically, roads are built in Nigeria even on dry land at an atrocious cost of N1 billion per kilometer. No one should aid or abate the swindling of the public in the road maintenance venture through fraudulent costing and timing of hand over periods.
