President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has issued a directive for the extensive rehabilitation of dilapidated federal roads throughout the country.
The roads include the Makurdi-Nsukka 9th Mile, East-West road, Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, Benin bypass, collapsed bridges of Enugu-Port Harcourt road, collapsed bridges of Shandam-Plateau, Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano, and Gombe-Bauchi roads, among others.
The government urged Nigerians to report any road that is poorly constructed anywhere in the country by sending photographs of the road, location, and name of the contractor to 08030986263, 08037086137, and 08106423197.
A statement regarding the order read:
“Without prejudice to all the good efforts of the past administration on road infrastructure development which they tackled within the limit of their resources, the work to be done to change the ugly state of our roads is quite enormous.
“Mr. President is not complaining of the challenges he inherited in nearly all sectors of the economy, especially as it concerns our road infrastructure, but he is quite courageous as he had promised to tackle the problems head-on which he has started to do not minding the debt burden inherited especially the funding gap of over N6 trillion from most of the inherited on-going road projects.
“Mr. President has since reeled out plans of commitment, consistency, and innovations towards actualising a sustainable road infrastructure development throughout the country.
“It is the right of every Nigerian to have value for their money deployed to the road infrastructure sector and therefore must show both interest and passion in all the ongoing projects by the Federal Ministry of Works and FERMA, and indeed all projects of the Federal, State and Local governments.
“The Federal Ministry of Works will document such complaints sent by Nigerians, verify and take effective action to correct such infractions.
“The Federal Ministry of Works shall also periodically recognise publicly those who made such reports that are genuine in a public engagement forum to be hosted quarterly by the Federal Ministry of Works and will sanction such erring contractors publicly too.
“Those who are complaining and demarketing this policy are simply those who do not wish Nigeria well.
“They are the same people that use adulterated bitumen in their projects while putting pressure on our Naira through the importation of adulterated bitumen instead of developing our abundant God-given bitumen deposits in Ondo State and other parts of Nigeria.
“Insofar as this new policy has not violated any law, the Federal Ministry of Works is forging ahead with this new policy.
“As of today, most of the ongoing projects are with asphalt pavement in line with this new policy while some are redesigned on concrete pavement, depending on the terrain and with a full understanding of the affected contractors of those projects.”
The statement added that despite inheriting a significant N6 trillion deficit in road infrastructure, Tinubu is resolute in tackling the challenges head-on.
Since assuming office in May, the President has already taken practical steps and has now approved a 2023 supplementary budget of N300 billion for the Ministry of Works.
The budget allocation consists of N100 billion for immediate palliative works in all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), as well as N200 billion for the continuation of critical road projects.
The President encouraged the public to actively monitor the projects and provide valuable feedback to the government.
He also warned contractors against breach of the said contract.
