By Adetutu Folasade-Koyi
Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has dismissed reports that most Nigerian roads are bad.
The minister noted that there are good parts and bad parts of roads, caused by ageing, abuse and maintenance failure over the years.
Fashola said this in a keynote speech at the United Nations-sponsored Federal Road Safety Corps capacity building for implementation of the UN road safety legal instruments on Tuesday, November 28, 2017, at the Central Bank of Nigeria Training Institute in Maitama, Abuja.
“How bad are our roads? Some have repeatedly said ‘all the roads are bad.’ That is not true. We have good parts, and bad parts caused by abuse and lack of maintenance.”
“A recent survey that I directed should be conducted, produced instructive and educating results about the degree and extent of bad portions of our roads.
“Ota-Abeokuta road in Ogun State, with a length of 64 kilometres has failures at: Kilometre 20 + 775 to 23+275 (2,500 metres) at Sango-Ota flyover to Tipper Garage; Kilometre 24+275 to 24+725 (550 metres) at Owode to Ifo and Kilometre 44+113 to 53+147 (9,034 metres) at Papalanto to Itori. A total failure length of 12, 084 metres, out of 64,000 metres, which is 18.75 percent
“While one meter of failure is not acceptable and we are mobilising the contractor back to this road, shortly, after four years without a budget, the point is that 18.75 percent out of 64 kilometres does not support the conclusion that “all” of the road is bad.
“A similar survey on the Asaba-bound sections and Benin-bound sections which I asked to be carried out on the Benin-Asaba Dual Carriageway, last week, also showed that the total aggregate of potholes and failures on the Asaba-bound section amounts to 3.02 percent of the total road length while the total aggregate of potholes and failures on the Benin-bound section is 1.51 percent. We are preparing remedial action to restore these sections. The same is true of the Asaba-Illa-Ebu-Edo State border road, which is one of 44 roads across Nigeria and the six geo-political zones where remedial work will start in a few weeks time once we conclude procurement.
“I am optimistic that Nigerians will experience change on their roads when they begin to implement their maintenance plan, which they constantly review with the ministry.
“Many of us, some of whom have not used the roads, readily describe our roads as a death trap. Really?”
The minister also added that he and his entourage would travel for long hours, at times, at night and have never had a single accident.
“I undertook a tour of our roads earlier this year to see things for myself. We went by road and travelled in two coaster buses, driving for at least 12 hours everyday. We left at 8:00am daily and drove until 8:00pm, at the least. On one occasion, we drove for 18 hours, from 8:00am to 2:00am the following day.
“We drove through different sections of roads that had outlived their design life, those that are within their design life with failures in some cases, and those that are currently under construction, where the drive was smooth.
“We were not trapped, and we did not die. The only incident we had, as we traversed 34 states (with Jigawa and Kebbi left to tour) was a tyre change on the Numan-Jalingo Road. We drove at a maximum of 100 kilometres per hour. We had no accident…”