Roads have been failing in Nigeria because governments concentrate on the construction of new roads without putting a strategy in place for the maintenance of existing ones, Minister of Works, Mr. Mike Onolememen, has said.
Onolememen said this in a keynote address delivered at the opening of a three-day National Conference on Road Pavement Failure in Nigeria organised by the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute, which ended in Abuja on Thursday.
The minister, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Dr. Abubarkar Mohammed, also disclosed that the ministry was considering evolving an effective strategy for recouping the investment of the Federal Government in road construction.
He said, "One of the major problems with our road sector is the lack of adequate and timely maintenance. Huge resources are spent on the construction of roads while no provision is made for their maintenance.
"Until the recent aggressive intervention by the Federal Government, over 70 per cent of Nigerian roads were in different states of disrepair. This is a country that used to boast of the best network of roads in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s.
"The huge investment was allowed to deteriorate without any visible maintenance strategy, leading to the observed state of Nigerian roads today. The government is now making bold interventions in major arterial roads in different parts of the country."
Onolomemen said out of the 200,000km roads in the country, only 39,500km were paved.
He added that for Nigeria to be among the 20 largest economies in the world by 2020, the country must grow its road infrastructure from 200,000km to 300,000km in the next five years.
Most of the new alignments, he added, would serve as feeder roads to mine fields, agricultural centres, industries and other major theatres of economic activities around the country.
Minister of Science and Technology, Prof. Ita Ewa, said the capacity of Nigerian roads was overstretched because 95 per cent of the nation's passenger and freight movement depends on road transportation.
Also Director-General, National Emergency Management Agency, Alhaji Mohammad Sani-Sidi, said that the agency had acquired 23 intensive care ambulances for taking care of emergency victims including victims of road accidents.
He added that the agency had also acquired two helicopters for search and rescue operations as well as excavators in the light of increasing incidence of building collapse especially in Abuja and Lagos.
