The cost of either constructing or maintaining a kilometer of road in Nigeria is extremely high when compared to other African countries which partly explains the dire situation of roads in the country.
Though Adedamola Kuti, the federal controller of works in Lagos told BusinessDay on phone that it is difficult to determine the cost of road construction or maintenance per kilometer, a report by an Abuja-based Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) states otherwise.
The report which was based on an earlier study conducted by the World Bank puts the cost constructing a kilometer of road at between N400 million and N1 billion. Placing this side by side with the total length of roads in the country makes the 2020 budget allocation for roads a huge joke.
Kuti estimated the total length of roads in the country at 200,000 kilometres out of which 34,000 kilometres belong to the federal government. The rest are owned by both the state and local governments at 16 percent and 66 percent respectively.
Confirming this on phone to BusinessDay, Femi Oludayo, a civil engineer, noted that “the condition of these roads are so poor that only about 35 percent of the network is motorable.”
Contrary to what obtains in other African countries, the cost of road maintenance in Nigeria isn’t much lower than the cost of building the road itself. Whereas in Limpopo, South Africa, maintaining a kilometer of road costs an equivalent of N7.6 million, in Nigeria it is N100million to N1billion per kilometer.
Meanwhile, from an aggregate expenditure of N10.33 trillion proposed by the Federal Government for 2020, a only total of N262 billion was appropriated to the Works and Housing Ministry.
In the current 2019 fiscal year, the ministry of Power, Works and Housing has budget allocation of N428.4 billion. This is higher than the N127 billion appropriated for Power and the N262 billion for works and housing for 2020 put together by about N39 billion.
“When you juxtapose the N262 billion budgetary allocation to works and housing with the number of roads in the country; and bearing in mind how expensive it is to either construct or maintain roads here, you will begin to see and understand how insincere we are to ourselves; we are only deceiving ourselves,” said Moshood Olawale, a private estate developer.
Continuing, he said, “we have been told that by the UN that our country’s population will double by 2050, meaning that provisions have to be made for building more infrastructure. What we have as budgetary allocation for works in 2020 which is even smaller than what was allocated this year, shows that our government is not just serious,” Olawale said.
Oludayo agreed with broader perspective on how high cost of maintenance makes a joke of the 2020 budget allocation to the ministry of works and housing.
He recalled that in 2013, the Federal Government awarded the contract for the reconstruction of the 127 kilometre Lagos-Ibadan Expressway at N167 billion which was equivalent to $1 billion at the time in terms of naira exchange rate to the dollar.
In the same year, he recalled further, a similar contract was awarded for the 1,028 kilometre Lagos-Abidjan road project. The Economic Community of West African Countries (ECOWAS) which awarded the contract estimated this project to cost between N167 billion and N240 billion.
“The six-lane ECOWAS project is expected to connect five major cities in the region namely Lagos, Nigeria; Cotonou, Benin Republic; Lome, Togo; Accra, Ghana and Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. In other words, the number of kilometers to be covered by that project is 8 times higher than Nigeria’s Lagos-Ibadan Expressway project; and the cost per kilometer is far lower than that of Nigeria,” he said
He pointed out that, at the projected maximum cost of N240 billion, the cost of the ECOWAS road per kilometer will be N234 million while the six-lane Lagos-Ibadan Expressway contract awarded by the Federal Government at N167 billion cost N1.3 billion per kilometer. And that was six years ago.
The message all these scenarios send to Nigerians, particularly the N262 billion budget for 34,000 kilometre roads that need attention to be given at N1 billion or more per kilometer, is that they will continue to be in the mess which defines the roads in Nigerian.
Another message to be gleaned from all these is that no particularly region in the country—Igbo, Hausa or Yoruba—is marginalized especially because most roads in the country, especially in the southern part of the country, are in deplorable condition.
The situation becomes more worrisome considering that even the N262 billion allocation is not for works alone, but also for housing. Added to this, the whole allocation will never be 100 percent released which explains why reconstruction work continues on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway six years after.
The neglect given to roads infrastructure in Nigeria is reason the transport sector in the country is underperforming. According to Daniel Obinali, an industrialist, the contribution of the sector to the gross domestic product (GDP) has been on the downward trend.
He noted, with concern, that the same poor state of roads has impacted businesses negatively, resulted in poor productivity of workers as immeasurable man-power is lost in traffic congestion on daily basis and avoidable accidents. It also serves as hot-bed for the twin evils of robbery and kidnapping
Source: Businessdayng
