PRESSED to seek an enduring solution to the problems of road maintenance in the country, the Federal Ministry of Works has established six Zonal Ministerial Independent Monitoring Teams.
Members of the teams which are drawn from the private sector, provide independent quarterly report on projects in the zones to the minister.
According to senior officials of the ministry, this has become a reliable project management tool in the administration’s efforts to improve service delivery in the road sector.
Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen who confirmed the development recently during his presentation of the ministerial scorecard, under the two years of Jonathan transformation agenda said: “With this new structure in place, the Ministry under my watch has been able to make momentous improvements on the rehabilitation, reconstruction and dualization of the Federal Roads network in these past two years covering a total of about 2,000 kilometres.
“About two years on, Nigerian roads can no longer be described as “death-traps” due to the marked improvement in the condition of the roads as a result of the unprecedented and massive rehabilitation, reconstruction and expansion of major arterial highways.
“Many road projects were abandoned and lots of interim certificates remained unpaid. Worse still, the morale of the engineers in the Ministry was very low. Our country came to that sorry state of affairs in the governance of the road sector because the leadership of our country in the past four decades failed to develop the right attitude to road development.”
The ugly trend needed urgent reversal. In recognition of this compelling need, the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and the leadership of the Federal Ministry of Works sought urgent and far reaching changes and reforms, especially in the areas of policy, management and financing of the nation’s roads infrastructure.
Onolememen said, “A paradigm shift became inevitable in the development of roads infrastructure in our country, judging by the recent experiences of the near collapse of roads infrastructure. We needed to reclaim the national road network from its state of disrepair and elevate it to an enviable state, where it could once again help to promote economic growth and national integration.”
Onolememen, an architect noted that “today, travel times between origins and destinations on most of these arterial routes have been drastically reduced. Also maintenance costs of vehicles have been reduced as a result of improved driving surfaces, devoid of potholes that hitherto put “holes” in the pockets of vehicle owners due to frequent repairs, occasioned by bad roads.
According to him, about 32 road projects have been completed and many more are nearing completion. “The “Operation Safe Passage” embarked upon by the Ministry in the fourth quarter of 2012 led to the recovering of failed portions of federal highways across the country; from Ilorin to Jebba, Lafia to Makurdi, Aliade to Oturkpo, Oturkpo to 9th Mile, Enugu to Port Harcourt, Kano to Katsina, Lagos to Ibadan, and Odukpani to Itu. Many other federal roads crisis-crossing the length and breadth of our country have been maintained these past two years.”
said,
He disclosed that the federal government has proposed the use of money from petroleum tax and Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP), but both systems require laws to enforce and make them implementable.
“With such a huge project portfolio (N1.4 trillion) and outstanding commitments of about N850 billion, it is clear that budgetary provisions alone will not be able to meet the funding requirement in road development in our country,” he said.
On the Public Private Partnership projects, the ministry during the period under review embarked on the procurement of projects such as: the Second Niger Bridge in Anambra and Delta States; Apakun/Oshodi–Murtala Muhammed International Airport Road in Lagos State; Nupeko Bridge, across the River Niger in Niger State.
While a successful bidder has been announced for the 2nd Niger Bridge (Julius Berger–AIIM Consortium), the process for the selection of the successful bidders in the other two is ongoing.
Other projects for which the Outline Business Case has been completed and “No Objection” by ICRC is being awaited include: Lagos-Iseyin-Kishi-Kaiama Road (414 km); Kaiama – Bahama – Kaoje – Gwambu – Fokku - Sokoto Road (631km); Ibi Bridge (over River Benue); Buruku Bridge (over River Katsina-Ala).
There are several on-going projects that are in various stages of completion.
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