The Nigerian Senate recently introduced a new bill that aims at shifting the responsibility for the maintenance, rehabilitation, and construction of roads from the federal government to private investors. This is due to repeated failures in providing solutions to bad roads in the country.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), Senator Gershom Bassey, in an interview with journalists in Abuja made this announcement.
“We must find a solution,” said Bassey. “The new legislation that the Senate is working on now seeks to move road construction and maintenance of the federal budget and let the private sector come in.”
According to Bassey, the House of Senate was convinced that FG was incapable of fixing the nation’s roads with the funds from the yearly budget.
Although there is an amended FERMA Act which stipulates that the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) should remit 5 percent of its pump price template to the agency, no remittance has been made.
“PPPRA has not remitted any fund to FERMA or to the state agency since the law was signed,” Bassey stated, adding that after investigations, it was found that unremitted funds accruable to both FERMA and the states’ road agencies have accumulated to N870 billion.
The new makes provision for setting up structures like Federal Road Authority (RRA) which would absorb FERMA. Bassey also stated that if this new bill is passed into law, it will place the country’s road infrastructural responsibilities in the hands of foreign and local investors.
Nigeria has the largest road network in West Africa and the second largest south of sub-Saharan Africa. Despite this feat, the country has a huge deficit in road infrastructure with several roads in deplorable conditions, costing the government some N450 billion yearly.
A lot of factors are responsible for this, ranging from poor maintenance, abandoned projects and high-level corruption from government officials who misappropriate funds allocated for infrastructure projects.
Particularly, road contracts seem not to be awarded to the best contractors because constructed roads begin to have potholes in less than a month after repairs and then the minister in charge would bid for another fund to repair the same road.
Sometimes, contractors are underpaid, which results in substandard deliveries. And at other times, contracts are awarded to people who are simply not held accountable for substandard deliveries. No transparency. Near-zero accountability.
The truth is that the system lacks transparency because of the high rate of corruption and nepotism in the country’s politics, which has affected infrastructural development over the years.
As laudable as the new bill seems, it is difficult to ascertain how transparent subsequent road projects would be based on antecedents. If enacted, the senate committee should consider placing stiff transparency measures before awarding contracts if the new bill will work.
