…as senators write Works Ministry, FERMA, NDDC
More light has been shed on the state of maintenance of Nigeria’s highways and prospects going forward following the October 1 Benin-Sapele Road petrol tanker fire in which a truck upturned and caught fire, resulting in five deaths and the loss of several millions of naira worth of properties.
Arising from this, it has been revealed that the majority of Nigeria’s 109 senators had filed a joint report in July, to the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), the Federal Ministry of Works (FMW) and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), on the deplorable state of many of the country’s highways.
This followed a barrage of individual reports on the matter at the Senate, until it became obvious that deplorable roads were pervasive, constituted a common concern among the senators and the generality of Nigerians and needed to be presented jointly for best effect and to save time.
This is even as the Minister of Works, David Umahi, recently reported paying federal road contractors N4 trillion and identifying sources of funding for another N4 trillion, out of a total of N14 trillion worth of Federal Government road undertakings, spanning 18,000 kilometres in 2,604 projects inherited from the Buhari administration.
Senator Ede Dafinone, representing Delta Central Constituency, speaking on an Arise News programme Wednesday, said the problem of bad roads in the country was a national one, to the extent that all senators were frequently reporting bad roads in their areas.
Senator Dafinone added that on seeing the frequency and volume of the reports, it was decided that the senators should stop making individual presentations and rather as a group, file one encompassing report.
Dafinone said he had confidence in the capacity of David Umahi to get the job done, despite scarce resources, as the minister has an “extra-ordinary track record”.
He added that it is the job of government to make sure that scarce resources are allocated properly to meet the needs of the people.
On the recent fuel tanker mishap on the Benin-Sapele Road, he said there was no paving on large segments of the Ologbo section and that the truck had fallen in an attempt to manoeuvre through the craters on the road.
“The road falls within my jurisdiction, falls within the Niger Delta. We are an oil producing area and will want to see roads fixed,” Dafinone said.
“The Federal Ministry of Works and FERMA drew attention to the contracts they had issued for work on the road. There is not much work going on there at this time and we are engaging them in that respect.
“We have written to the NDDC as an interventionist agency. They have put it in their 2024 budget to get the job done. Roads will be a major part of their budget for 2024,” he said.
On alternative means of transport and haulage, Dafinone said there was a desire to reinvigorate the ports in the axis and that the Koko Port in Delta State was currently on loan by the Navy and it was hoped that it would be retrieved and deployed for the import and export of goods to and from abroad to serve to relieve the roads.
Dafinone advised state governments to press to repair deplorable Federal Government roads in their domains.
“Where a state government sees that a road is bad and people are suffering and there is no solution, or it is taking too long from the Federal Government, the state governments should take action,” he said.
Recall that on Sunday, October 1, while Nigeria celebrated its 63rd Independence anniversary, eight buses, two tankers, five trailers, two cars, and one motorcycle were burnt completely on the Benin-Sapele Road following a tanker explosion. The ensuing fire was said to have been sparked as a group of locals scrambled to scoop fuel which spilled from the fallen tanker.
The Nigerian Observer had previously reported that the Benin-Sapele Road, which spans about 64 kilometres and should ordinarily take an estimated 50 minutes to travel by car, had become broken into deep muddy ditches and gulleys, which now took bus drivers about six hours to navigate, while trailer truck drivers reported being stranded for upwards of five days.
Our report added that several trailer trucks also routinely tipped over and fell, further hindering the flow of traffic and spewing goods onto the roads, which often got damaged or pilfered, causing irretrievable losses to the owners.
Concerned stakeholders list the problems with Nigerian roads as often having to do with poor structural designs or execution, poor drainage systems or the lack of drainage altogether, as well as poor maintenance or the absence thereof, all of which cause roads to become unserviceable.
