Fashola said that tolls would be introduced in 38 points across the country. Though the exact locations where the new toll plazas would be located have not been identified, Fashola stated that the government may stick to the old locations.
What this means invariably is that each state capital will have one toll plaza, with Abuja or Lagos having two. Conservatively, if each toll plaza makes N1 million monthly, the government is projecting to rake in N38 million/month, and about N54.7 billion/year. In two years, N1 trillion could be set aside to carry out maintenance.
A public affairs analyst, Lekan Shote, who lauded the idea behind the return of the toll gates, hinged his reservations on the erosion of the people’s purchasing power.
According to him, just like the fuel increase regimes worsened the people’s living conditions, the toll imposition will further recess the people’s income and increase the cost of doing business for most struggling Nigerians, battling with a meager income.
Those who will be worse hit by the toll reintroduction are the ordinary people, especially, traders, as transporters will eventually pass the cost to them.
Transportation and logistics experts insist that nothing is wrong with collection of tolls on any road, be it federal, state or local government. The snag, they argue, is that the people’s disposable income have been badly impacted by recession that introducing toll at this time would be adding to their misery.
Shote likened the toll fee (road tax), may further tighten the net against the nation’s huge members of the informal sector, who still escape the tax net. “If you do not pay income tax or company tax, you will at least pay road toll indirectly as long as you ply the roads or buy goods freighted on the roads.”
He blamed Buhari’s macroeconomic policies which has eroded Nigerians’ earning capacity.
But, Dr. Joseph Shojobi, a foremost transportation systems engineer and planner, said nothing better outside tolling, lies in the horizon if Nigerians are to enjoy quality roads with better markings and signage.
Shojobi, who retired 50 years ago from the University of Lagos as a senior lecturer, claimed Nigerians loses N80 billion daily as vehicular occupational cost as a result of the state of the nation’s roads.
He served as Chairmen of the post war Federal Roads Advisory Committee under Alhaji Femi Okunnu as the Federal Commissioner for Works & Transport. The retired don described as “government’s most unpardonable gaffe,” the cancellation of toll plaza by the Obasanjo administration.
Blaming the deplorable conditions of the roads on the stoppage of the tolls in 2002, Shojobi said that despite the outcry that the plazas were becoming a cesspool of corruption, the revenue accrued from the plazas was close to a billion Naira as at 2000, and would have outstripped a trillion by 2016.
Quoting figures, Shojobi said the toll collection, as at 2000, was N569 million, N742 million in 2001 and N779 million in 2002.
He said: “If this revenue had been allowed to continue to grow, we would have gone pass N1 trillion, and we would not be cash strapped in fixing the roads.”
Shojobi said that successive governments have continued to strive against shrinking revenue in confronting the bad state of the roads headlong.
He said series of interventions such as the introduction of petrol tax, on which series of price increments over the years have been pegged, necessitating the establishment of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), or the establishment FERMA, to handle regular maintenance of roads have continued to fail due to paucity of funds.
The storm ahead
Though Fashola has assured that much of the details behind the eventual reintroduction of the toll regime were in the works, Nigerians have also taken the government to task to come up with more disclosures that would assist in planning their activities and living.
One of the very basic information already released by the government was that the new plazas would be introduced at the old locations, which obviously would be along the government’s approved corridor. But for states like Lagos, achieving such may increase the burden of millions of people living even up to kilometre 50, on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
“For most of us living at Warewa, Magboro, Ofada, Aseese, Arepo, Mowe, Ibafo and other sundry boundary communities on that axis, the news was a bombshell as it would add to our financial burden on both sides of the carriage,” Anthony Umeh, a regular commuter said.
Another concern identified by regular users of the road is that the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, for instance, now provides home to no fewer than a dozen religious institutions, many of which also offers estate facilities to their faithful, who lives therein while they work in the city.
Umeh and Godwin Oku, a commercial bus driver who operates the Mowe-Berger route, said it would be nice if the government can relocate the plaza to a little after the Redemption Camp. They said that with living and commercial activity already encroaching on the old toll gate at the Ojo end of the highway, retaining the plaza there will not serve the purpose for which it was meant to serve.
Patrick Adenusi of Safety Without Borders said one of the bane of Nigeria’s development is policy summersault. He recalled that all stakeholders rose against the cancellation of the toll system by the Obasanjo administration, but that lack of political will stood against its immediate reversal by successive governments, “until the reality of an empty purse went beyond a mere headache or rhetoric to threaten the very heart of governance.”
He said had the late Musa Yar’Adua or Goodluck Jonathan administrations demonstrated the will, the short-sighted decision taken on suspicion of sleaze or corruption for which anti-corruption agencies such as the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Offences Commission (ICPC) and Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) were later created, Nigeria would not have slipped into becoming the third country with the most unsafe roads in the world.
Adenusi said the toll system being contemplated by the government is part of the elements that is embedded in the new Road Trust Fund Bill, which has passed its second reading, and has moved to committee stage for further fine-tuning.
He said while tolling may be a very sure way of bailing the nation out of its poor road maintenance profile, transportation system experts must be involved in building a sustainable strategy in maintaining the cluster of roads in the country.
Like Adenusi, Shojobi listed vehicle count, traffic density and travel pattern as factors that must be considered in coming up with locations where the plazas should be sited.
Shojobi said so many variables, among them; new trends in transportation patterns, population, vehicle density, migration, and other factors, may have adversely affected the old locations, which may make siting the new ones on same spots unprofitable.
“I have no doubt that the government would employ experts in coming up with various engineering solutions now that the government is looking at the various strategies to help it resolve its maintenance quagmire,” he said.
The scholar pointed out the need for a review of road classifications in the country. A decision that may also inform the reclassification of some roads hitherto classified as Trunk B as a Trunk A, while some Trunk C roads could actually have been serving as Trunk B as a result of its vehicular density.
Viewing the nature of maintenance of the nation’s roads, Shojobi suggested that roads should be broadly classified into two major classes as the 774 local governments across the country has proven too weak to be saddled with road maintenance.
Other revenue spots
Shojobi identified insurance premiums, import duty tariffs, vehicle assessment tax, MOT certification and other other road related taxes and levies as some sources the government can explore to generate more money to maintain its roads.
He said corporate organisations, as well as individuals, may also be invited to assist in rehabilitating any road with provisions for adequate incentives to recoup their investments.
Experts added that if exploited, the toll regime may be become the needed elixir to extricate the roads from of neglect and dilapidation.
For instance, Shojobi insisted that the collectable revenue should be put into a sinking fund under the administration of an independent agency.
From the fund, the agency which should compose of incorrigible Nigerians should embark on the allocation of funds for any classes of roads across the country.
Reminiscing on the impact of such an agency in the past – the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) in the rehabilitation of all classes of roads across the country, Shojobi said that such an agency should be in charge of administering the fund on behalf of Nigerians.
Describing roads as a national and an international asset linking communities and countries, Shojobi said that the time has come for Nigerians to accept the reality of paying to finance its maintenance.
“Everybody want to own a bit of the road but it is a national asset. As a national asset, it must be maintained regularly if we must continue to get the best value from its usage. As the people pay for the use of electricity or even water supply, or the use of gas, they hardly considered road as a resource worth paying for. Nobody thinks of paying for the use of the road. So, we end up abusing our little space on it. All of that would change if we begin to exploit the various opportunities that we could get by getting the best mileage of these roads which are our commonwealth. We should begin to pay for the use of the roads and the best place to start is to by introducing the toll regime,” Shojobi added.
