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Nigeria
Loses N450bn Yearly To Bad Roads
The Federal Government said yesterday
that due to bad roads across the country, the economy
was losing about N450 billion annually .Similarly, it
estimated about N321 billion as the total amount, the
three tiers of government, namely, federal, states and
local governments, require for routine and periodic
maintenance of the national road network on an annual
basis.
Managing Director of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency
(FERMA), Engineer Olubunmi Peters, who spoke during an
interaction with finance correspondents in Abuja pointed
out that, an average vehicle in the country spent about
N90,000 extra on maintenance including tyres, fuel, oil,
amongst others, due to the effects of bad roads.
According to him, when N90,000 is multiplied by about 5
million vehicles that ply the roads in Nigeria, it
amounts to a staggering sum of N450billion waste to the
economy annually.
But he added that, the loss did not include the human
lives and properties that are lost as a result of
accidents on bad roads.
Analysing the amount required for road maintenance by
the three tiers, Peters stated that, the federal
government would need about N112.4billion while the 36
States and the 774 local governments require
N64.05billion and N144.55billion respectively, for the
maintenance of urban and rural roads.
According to him, only 15 percent of Nigerian roads were
in good motorable condition with a life span of eight
years on the average without structural improvement
while noting that, without an organised asset management
programme, Nigerian road will be in a total state of
disrepair within the next five to eight years.
He, however, added that to prevent the roads from
deteriorating, the Federal Government needed a minimum
of N150billion annually for the rehabilitation of the 25
per cent of the 34,000 kilometres of federal road
network in the next five years.
This, he said, was in addition to the amount required
annually in the next five years for the maintenance of
federal government roads in the country.
The FERMA boss pointed out that 35 per cent of the roads
were in bad state, 30 per cent of which were in poor
structural state and could not last for another 2 years
without developing multiple potholes and failures, while
20 per cent of the network were fairly motorable. He
said, in line with the medium strategy for road sector
maintenance management, 35 per cent of the roads which
are in collapsed state required rehabilitation and the
30 per cent of the roads in poor structural state also
require preventive structural enhancement and
carriageway strengthening.
He added that, on the other hand, the 20 per cent in
fairly stable state needed carriageway strengthening
while 15 per cent of the roads network which are in
motorable stable required an immediate, sustainable
maintenance management programme.
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