By Okechukwu Victor
SIR: Nigeria’s population is estimated at almost 200 million, its GDP $397.30 billion in 2018 and blessed with abundant natural resources including being the world’s sixth largest oil producer and largest in Africa with proven oil and gas resources of 37 billion barrels and 192 trillion cubic feet respectively.
It is blessed with vast arable lands and significant deposit of largely untapped minerals. Truly, we have the resources to make our roads road worthy for road users, but lack of good policy choice and strategies have caused us to be in this situation where we find ourselves with all its abundance.
Nigeria federal roads have become death traps like the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Ibadan-Ife highway, Lokoja-Abuja highway, Kano-Maiduguri highway, Ilorin-Jebba road and others. In 2017, a World Bank report on a $300 million loan to Nigeria for roads showed that about 15 per cent of federal roads were in good condition, down from 50 per cent in 1999.
The bank observed that Nigeria roads suffer from weak designs, inadequate drainage system and deterioration as a consequence of a poor maintenance system/culture, government policy stance in favour of good road construction and rehabilitation at the expense of maintenance resulting in heavy road and maintenance backlog; irrelevant releases of budgetary allocation resulting in incomplete road rehabilitation contracts and poor construction quality; and absence of a strategic planning process coupled with a poor road management.
Roads are built in other countries for 30 or 40 years without anybody touching them. As long as we have the resources to build roads, there is no reason why we cannot build roads that will last 20 or 30 years.
Nigerian roads don’t last more than five raining seasons and they are all bad why? It is because of how the roads have been designed.
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Have they been designed to carry small weight? Have they been designed to carry trailer and oil tankers? That is the question we need to ask not continuing to build at prohibitive cost, considering the cost without considering quality.
It is a national tragedy that does not shock anyone anymore that scores of innocent people are killed daily in avoidable accidents on accounts of bad roads.
The Industrialist, Aliko Dangote, calculates that the economy losses up to N140 billion weekly from horrific Apapa Lagos gridlock alone; the Economic Intelligence Unit of the Lagos State Ministry of Economic planning and budget put losses at $1 billion (N306 billion) monthly due to traffic congestion on roads.
The same poor road network has resulted in poor productivity, as immeasurable man-hours are lost in traffic. Lack of good road network has made Nigeria not to compete with their counterparts in China and even Benin Republic due to lack of effective and modern transport system. If Nigeria has good roads the manufacturers will have competitive advantage over other countries.
Since 1999, more than N1.45 trillion ($8.5billion) has been spent on roads construction or maintenance with very little evidence of money spent. The World Bank’s benchmark for building a kilometre of road is N238 million; the same one-kilometre is built for about N1 billion in Nigeria.
Nigeria roads can be said to be in a state of catastrophe. Already 59 years, despite huge revenue from oil, it is yet to develop a good transportation system. Our leaders have to alleviate the suffering of the people by building good road; even to attract foreign direct investment good roads must be built.
- Okechukwu Victor, Lagos.
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