Senate seeks N300bn intervention for Niger roads, Fashola orders contractors to site

The Senate Tuesday called on the federal government to as a matter of urgency, make provision for N300 billion for rehabilitation and reconstruction of highly deplorable federal roads in Niger state.

The   call coincided with the directive by the Minister of Works, Babatunde Raji Fashola, to contractors already assigned for fixing of the roads to move to sites immediately.

Deplorable nature of Trunk A roads in the state stretching over 2,000 kilometres, was brought to the attention of Senators by the Senate Deputy Whip, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi (APC Niger North) through a motion of urgent national importance.

Senator Abdullahi in the motion anchored on orders 42 and 52 of the Senate’s standing rule, lamented that due to bad shapes of the roads, articulated vehicle drivers used their trucks to block the roads from Friday last week to early hours Tuesday with attendant untold hardships on other road users.

Niger state, he said, has the longest federal road network of 2,263km out of a total of 32,000km of national federal roads network. 

“The federal roads in Niger state stretched from the Abuja – Kaduna end to the Jebba – Mokwa – Makera – Tegina – Birnin Gwarimpa – Kaduna road to the Mokwa – New Bussa – Agwara – Kigera end which lies to the border with the republic of Benin. 

“Overall, the following are critical linkage roads within Niger state that provide logistical and vehicular movements between the North and South; especially the South west and North-west corridors. 

“Because of the massive land area of Niger state at 76,363km (representing about nine percent of the total land area of the country), all movements from North to South substantially traverse the state.”

“Indeed, the massive haulage of heavy industrial goods such as petroleum products, iron rods, cement, finished manufactured goods, machines and equipment, electronic materials and goods, building materials etc, in which trucks and tankers are overloaded pits great pressure on the roads and thus are seriously devastating to the state of the roads,” he said.

He lamented that all the major link roads have totally failed with fatal accidents occurring on a daily basis with loss of lives, goods and vehicles. 

He added that the current rate of funding of federal roads in the state is unfortunately dismal and cannot deliver, which has led to many of the projects abandoned by contractors.

But hours before the Senate’s call on the Ministry of Works for urgent repairs of some portions of the road, the minister directed contractors handling the various roads, to move to sites immediately.

Fashola in a statement signed by the director of press and public relations in the ministry, Boade Akinola , specifically directed the contractor handling the construction of Lambata-Lapai – Bida road to immediately embark on remedial works with boulders on the critical section of the road in order to bring relief to commuters.