Whereas responding to the general public outcry over the acquisition of prohibitive Sports activities Utility Autos (SUVs) for members of the Senate in October, 2023, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Providers, Sunday Karimi, justified the procurement on the grounds of dangerous roads throughout the nation.
Among the many main highways at present in ruins are Enugu-Port Harcourt Street, East-West Street, Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, Abuja-Lokoja Street, Makurdi-Nsukka ninth Mile Street, Benin-Asaba Street, Onitsha-Enugu Expressway, Calabar-Ogoja Street and Sagamu-Benin Street.
We recall that the Senate in February, 2022 implored the central authorities to declare a state of emergency on federal roads to enhance the state of the key technique of transportation within the nation.
Once more, in November, 2022, the higher legislative chamber urged the Federal Authorities to allocate N500 million from the Service Extensive Vote to the Federal Roads Upkeep Company (FERMA) for pressing rehabilitation of the highways with the intention to cut back the carnage on the dilapidated federal roads. It additionally within the decision requested that the Nigerian Nationwide Petroleum Firm Ltd (NNPCL) Street Infrastructure Tax Credit score Scheme ought to be expanded to cowl upkeep of failed sections of the federal highways throughout the nation.
Within the 2023 supplementary price range, N288.44 billion was allotted for rehabilitation of roads and bridges whereas N548.56 billion was put aside for highway building within the 2024 federal price range.
Given the deplorable state of the roads throughout the nation, it’s evident that the legislative interventions have yielded no important outcomes.
Statistics on deaths occasioned by the appalling state of the roads are mind-boggling. Apart from the financial losses incurred on account of dangerous roads, the wanton carnage that outcomes from ubiquitous pot-holes and craters on the roads advertises a nation that has scant regard for the lives of its residents.
From the native councils to the central authorities, funds are allotted yearly for highway building and upkeep however the proof earlier than us means that these sums develop wings as quickly as they’re launched. It appears to us that majority of public workplace holders have developed an ingenious manner of utilizing the wet season or paucity of funds as an alibi. However it suffices to say that if roads can’t be constructed in the course of the interval of rainfall, why are they not constructed or the present ones rehabilitated in the course of the dry season?
As a matter of truth, we might have anticipated that the dry season between October and March ought to have turned all the geographical house of Nigeria right into a building website with one authorities trying to outdo the opposite within the provision of wonderful roads, however our commentary suggests the opposite.
Once more, we’re hardly persuaded by the argument of paucity of funds. How can we within the mild of huge corrupt practices and most cancers of corruption that afflict public finance administration in Nigeria? Why, as an example, is the price of developing a kilometre of highway in Nigeria in regards to the highest on this planet? We equally reckon that in some locations the place new roads are constructed, they collapse inside an area of lower than two years, whereas roads that had been constructed in the course of the colonial period and within the 60s didn’t present indicators of weak spot till a long time after.
We additionally imagine there’s the necessity for the Nationwide Meeting to assessment the structure in a fashion that ensures that highway building and upkeep turns into the (unique) protect of the state governments in Nigeria.
For example, it doesn’t seem to make any (financial) sense for the residents of Lagos and neighbouring Ogun State to count on a minister to come back down all the way in which from Abuja to fill the yearly craters on Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway with the intention to save commuters from dying earlier than their time. The state governments of Ondo and Edo, for instance, might most effectively keep the Benin-Ore highway and halt the carnage and the attendant socio-economic losses if the structure devolved highway building to the states. Residents, after all, will put extra strain on the seen governments of Lagos, Ogun, Ondo and Edo States than the distant central authorities in Abuja. The identical holds for different states throughout the nation.
The current aberration the place the federating states can’t reconstruct sure roads of their domains with out the authority of the central authorities is completely inadmissible. In the identical vein, the Income Allocation System should now considerably tilt in favour of states, significantly in step with fiscal federalism of the independence period.
