Members of the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) have lamented the poor state of roads, calling on the Federal Government to fix them.
The union noted that the situation was a disadvantage for its members across the country.
Its President, Dr. Musa Muhammed Maitakobi, who is the treasurer of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), in an interview with The Nation tasked Federal Government to rise up to its responsibility of providing infrastructure that would stand the test of time.
According to him the problem cuts across every state in Nigeria, thereby making movement of goods and services difficult.
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“For the past one week, trailers of our members have been stranded on the road between Bida – Lapai in Niger State. The road is impassable, it is totally bad and this is a road that is not more than 14 kilometers,” he said.
Maitakobi said government should see it as a serious challenge because it has gotten so bad that hardly could one trailer out of 10 that transporting goods from Lagos to Kano reach its destination without difficulty.
He said: “It is the same story for Port-Harcourt down to Enugu, Onitsha and most of these roads are not more than 10km. The same experience is what we face on Abuja to Kaduna. The place kidnappers use for their attack is not more than 20 kilometres.”
Maitakobi said besides the economic implication, the lives of their members and their workers who ply the roads are endangered and many of them have lost their lives and properties due to bandits on the bad roads.