By Favour Nnabugwu

The Federal Government announced that it will commit N75,765,087,178.28 to carry out rehabilitation works on collapsed portions of roads in Nigeria this yelutide season

The Director, Highway Construction and Rehabilitation, Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, Mr Folorunso Esan, in Abuja at the meeting of stakeholders in the transport sector to plan and prepare for making the roads motorable and ensuring the safety of lives on the country’s highways.

He stated that the rehabilitation is to improve ease of travel for Nigerians during the yuletide seasons.

Mr Esan revealed that “The rainy season has affected many sections of the road across the country, hence the need for urgent palliative works to avoid further deterioration.

“Bad roads have been identified, indicating that the affected roads had been mapped out and contracts for the repairs would be awarded to contractors as part of the preparation for the ember months.

The total cost for the repair works is N75,765,087,178.28.”

The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, said that the government is doing all it can to move cargo by rail as it is faster and it makes the roads more durable.

“The President Muhammadu Buhari administration is making efforts to ensure that overloaded trucks no longer ply the nation’s highways.

You may not be aware of this, the government is building the Kano, Lagos and the Abeokuta pipeline and we want to see petrol tankers, timber going on railway and we hope this can relieve pressure on the road.

“I want to appeal to road users, NUPENG, NATO, NURTW and FRSC that we have to work together. Our responsibility is to ensure safety of the road users.

“All the data that we have about the road shows us that most of the accidents on the road are as a result of speed violation.

Fashola added that the Ministry will start restrictions with overloading stating that enforcement will commence from the tollgate in Lagos.

“If your vehicle is overloaded, you will pay fines, so the reason we have done that is that we want to make it cheaper to comply and make it very expensive to break the law,” he said.

He stated that the government hopes people will choose to comply instead of paying excessive penalties.