The Senate, on Thursday, asked the Federal Government to reintroduce toll gates in all the federal highways in the country and channel the revenue collected for the maintenance of the roads.
Former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration cancelled the toll gates across the country in 2004, citing loss of revenue to government and the poor maintenance of the tolled roads.
The Senate, however, said on Thursday, that new methods of funding roads projects should include concessioning to construction companies with solid capital base and excellent track record.
The Senate also invited the management of Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) to brief it on the state of Federal Government’s concessioning arrangements and ways of exploring Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements in road construction.
The decision followed the adoption of recommendations of the Senate ad hoc Committee on Works on the total collapse of federal roads in Nigeria and prevalent gully erosion.
Presenting the report, chairman of the committee, Senator Barnabas Gemade (APC) Benue South) informed that many of the federal roads were poorly designed and some were even constructed without design, insisting that “since these roads lack designs, the objectives for constructing them may not be fully achieved.”
He disclosed that the yearly budgetary allocation given to the Ministry of Works was not enough to construct major roads of international standard, adding that infrastructure should be made functional “so that a large number of roads should be concessioned as it is done in some advanced countries.”
Tribune.
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