Virtually all the roads in the country are bad. From Abuja to Lagos, Maiduguri, Lokoja, Port Harcourt, Gusau, Ibadan, Ilorin and Enugu. Many blame it all on poor maintenance of the infrastructure, writes ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE
OWER, Works and Housing Minister Babatunde Fashola’s major headache as far as roads are concerned is how to maintain them.
Poor maintenance culture, Fashola said, remains the bane of good roads.
At the just-concluded National Council on Works in Abuja, Fashola argued that roads nationwide suffered from lack of maintenance.
He said: “The problem with the nation’s road network is not lack of quality, but poor maintenance culture.”
He added that prompt repairs remain the key, if the nation must solve the crisis of bad roads.
Fashola insisted that Nigeria built smoother roads compared to other parts of the world. “Nigeria builds more quality roads which can stand the test of time. If you go to other countries, they maintain even their bumpy roads, our roads are smoother. We build to higher desired specifications. The missing link is maintenance,” he said.
He also underscored the importance of markings and signages, which are grossly inadequate on roads, arguing that a change is urgently necessary if the government must bequeath safe, motorable roads to her people.
Stakeholders and experts agree with Fashola.
For Patrick Adenusi, Founder Safety Without Borders, maintenance is key. “If we want to see real change, we must work on our psyche and maintain our roads,” Adenusi said.
Adenusi, said lack of maintenance was also affecting the bridges, adding that most bridges, which ought to have lasted for 50 years, are collapsing because of long years of neglect. He cited the collapsed Mokwa-Jebba Bridge, which is going to cost the Federal Government about N2.5 billion to repair as part of the huge cost of neglect of public infrastructure.
He said regular funding was the key to the neglect of roads. To restore most of the roads there must be new funding paradigm.
Long neglect
The story of the 193,200 kilometres stretch of roads across the country has been that of age-long neglect.
The last time adequate attention was given to roads, according to experts, was the pre-independence era, when the Public Works Department (PWD) held sway.
Across all the major colonial divisions/districts, and later regions of pre-independent Nigeria, the British government established the PWD, which, among other mandates, cleared grasses on road shoulders, cleaning and desilting floodwater ducts and gutters, and patched the roads.
The PWD until the end of the First Republic got its subventions directly from the colonial government. Its line of funding began to be blurred during the military rule.
The era, however, planted the seed of the neglect of PWD. Successive administrations concentrated on road construction and the opening up of the country in line with emerging National Economic Development Plans (NEDP) of successive administration, from the mid 60s to late 80s.
With the decentralisation of road maintenance, following the classifications of roads into three trunks in the 60s, the fate of PWD was sealed. Each state merely copied the Federal Government’s template which was to provide intervention fund for the repair of roads, which, in most cases, wasn’t regular.
Direct funding of the repairs soon became unfeasible because of paucity of funds. With the grim realities of the economic crunch, the government in the 80s introduced tolling on some roads to generate funds for maintenance.
The toll worked, until the government in 2003 stopped it because of corruption.
The government resorted to direct budgetary funding and eventually established the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), in 2007, to coordinate the maintenance responsibility of the Ministry of Works.
An amendment before the National Assembly, however, intends to stop FERMA.
In order words, policy instability like Dr Joseph Shojobi, a transportation engineer, noted is a key issue to the whole problem.
He stated that as the government tackles the long years of neglect, it must think up new and better funding avenues for regular maintenance.
To the chairman, Senate Committee on Roads Infrastructure, Senator Gbenga Ashafa, the roads have a bad profile because maintenance is capital intensive. He argued, there may be the need for new statutes to regulate activities and provide a window for sanctions.
According to Ashafa, in a paper presented at a Transportation forum in Lagos recently, six bills, among them; the Nigerian Railway Authority Bill, 2015, the National Transport Commision Bill, 2015, the National Roads Funds Bill, 2015, the Federal Roads Authority Bill, 2015, the National Inland Waterways Authority Bill, 2015, and the Nigerian Ports and Harbor Authority Bill, 2015 are at various stages before the National Assembly since 2015, aimed at addressing virtually all gray areas in the sector.
Way out
Besides policy instability, Dr. Tajudeen Bawa ‘Allah, pioneer dean, School of Transportation Studies, Lagos State University (LASU), identified two other issues that impact the roads badly. First, according to him, is the number of heavy vehicles on the roads. If the railway begins to work, he insists, the roads would be relieved of their excess load and would last longer.
The second is the weather. “Our weather does not help our roads. The yearly rainfall weakens our roads considerably. Research has shown that 80 percent of our roads are laterite (earth) base and not stone. What this means is that they are easily washed off anytime there is heavy downpour.”
This, according to Bawa ‘Allah, means that we must begin to change our roads to stone-base, or ensure that new ones being built have stone base as well, as ensure that we provide adequately for the maintenance of existing laterite-base ones.
“When you reduce cost during construction and adopt laterite base instead of stone, you must be prepared to provide funding for maintenance every year. The realisation is that it costs more eventually. Government should start constructing more stone-base roads, especially in the Southwest, Southeast and Southsouth. Let government’s attention shift from laterite base. We have enough mountains that could be blasted to generate the stones required,” he said.
He also advocated that the Federal Government return to tolls of all the highways.
“Major roads especially highways should be tolled and the funds should be centrally collected and disbursed, the agency should also be responsible for scheduled maintenance of the roads without any interference from the Federal Government or its agencies.”
For other classes of roads, Bawa’Allah said governments should solely bear the cost of maintenance. “State roads might be difficult to toll, so state governments must brace up to continue to finance regular repair of all other classes of roads, both of the states or local government (inner city) roads.”
Shojobi, who retired from the University of Lagos in 1976, carpeted the Obasanjo government for abolishing toll gates. “If the toll gates had remained, it would have generated funds that would have been adequate for the maintenance of major highways.
Shojobi said before its stoppage in 2002, the government’s revenue from tolls were: N569 million (2000), N742 million (2001) and N779 million (2002).
He said: “If this had continued, revenue from tolls alone would, by now, have grossed over N1 billion and in the last 15 years it would have made quite a lot and Nigeria would not have been groaning under the yoke of funding the deplorable road networks despite the recession.”
Noting that Nigeria loses N80 billion monthly on operating cost to vehicular repairs due to bad roads, Shojobi said Nigerians would heave a sigh of relief, if fresh funds were generated and an independent agency saddled with maintaining them.
Describing the roads as both national and an international asset, Shojobi said part of the problem is that people don’t think they should pay for using them.
“Unlike electricity, water or gas usage, which people still pay for their daily use, despite being collectively paid for from the commonwealth, nobody thinks they should pay for using the roads. As a national and international asset, its usage ought to be paid for. That is the way we could all sustain it and continue to enjoy good motorable roads.”
Bawa’Allah identified the weather as a major debilitating factor that predisposes the roads to incessant failings, but Shojobi said most roads suffer premature failures, largely as a result of usage and abuse.
He called for the establishment of an agency to be in charge of the maintenance, adding that agencies such as the Directorate of Foods, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFFRI) and the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) left huge impact.
Shojobi agreed with Fashola that the roads lacked appropriate markings and signages.
While Fashola stressed that installing signages on roads was economical, experts said their deployment would make travelling more pleasurable and the roads more beautiful.
“A lot of Nigerian drivers don’t know anything about road signages. This is a country with over 80 percent of uninformed road users who knew almost next to nothing about road markings. This makes Nigeria a very unique nation. But government should not say it would not install road signages and road markings,” Adenusi said.
