Power, Works and Housing Minister, Babatunde Fashola, on Tuesday refuted claims by many Nigerians that roads in the country are bad.
He said that there are still good and bad parts which are caused by abuse and lack of maintenance.
The minister, who made this claim in his keynote address at the United Nations-sponsored capacity building programme for the Federal Road Safety Corps in Abuja, explained that he made his observation after undertaking a tour of Nigerian roads.
According to Fashola the problem of some of the roads was that they have outlived their design life and should have been replaced and rebuilt, but had not.
Noting that some of the roads were built in the 1970s, he said “not only have they outlived their design life, they have had to deal with tonnage and capacities well beyond what their design intended. Can such a road be truly expected to stay intact and deliver a pleasant motoring experience?
“Thankfully, these types of roads are now receiving attention under President Buhari, as the Calabar-Itu-Odukpani, Gombe-Biu, Ilorin-Jebba and other roads that fall within this category are being awarded for reconstruction, along with the third class of roads, which are just being built.”
On the second category of roads, he said that they have been victims of overloading, right of way abuse, and lack of maintenance.
“Members of the public must know that roads are depreciating assets. They do not last forever and require regular maintenance and, with time, replacement, if they are to serve their intended purpose. These factors of abuse and lack of maintenance combine to reduce the quality of our motoring experience on the roads.
“With this background, I will now pose the question: 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,” Fashola said.
Wondering why many citizens, even those who never used the roads always classify Nigerian roads as a death trap, the minister said, “I undertook a tour of our roads earlier this year to see things for myself. We went by road and travelled in two buses, driving for at least 12 hours every day. We left at 8am daily and drove until 8pm at the least. On one occasion, we drove for 18 hours, from 8am to 2am 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.”
Fashola’s claim is coming as the people of South-East part of Nigeria have continued to lament over the dilapidated state of almost every federal road in the region.
