NASS gives FERMA ultimatum over nation’s bad roads network

The National Assembly, on Wednesday, gave the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) a two-week ultimatum within which to collate the list of all the bad roads in the country and report back to the parliament.

The Chairman of the House Committee on FERMA, Hon Richard Olufemi Bamisele who gave the directive at a joint budget defence session organised in collaboration with the Senate Committee on FERMA stated that the Agency by this directive “is expected to furnish both the Senate and House Committees on FERMA with the outcome of the assessment immediately to enable the National Assembly take appropriate actions in the consideration of its 2020 budget appropriation.

Hon Bamisile disclosed that this became necessary because of the deplorable state of roads across the country which he described as unacceptable to the Ninth National Assembly as the elected representatives of the people.

He lamented that most of the roads across the country were in very poor state and as such presently constitute nightmares for various travellers in the six geopolitical zones of the country.

He recalled that in 2017, the Enugu -Awka -Onitsha Road, Abuja -Lokoja-Okene Road,, Kaduna -Abuja, Okigwe -Umuahia Road, Otukpo -Otukpa Road, Lagos -Sagamu -Ore -Benin Road, Lagos -Ibadan Expressway ,as well as Lokoja -Ajaokuta Road amongst others were listed as the worse roads in the country.

According to him, ” as at today, I do not know the nature or status of these roads, if they had moved from bad to good or worst to better due to rehabilitation work etc.

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” However, in order to know the current status of these roads and other roads in the country, there is need to have a large scale assessment of the current state of Nigerian roads.

” In this regard, I urge FERMA to collate the list of all the roads in the country, stating their current status and furnish same to the committee within two weeks after the conclusion of the budget defence.

“This effort will help the joint committees to know which road needs urgent attention and necessary action.”

This came just as he commended the Federal government’s initiative in offering tax concession to big companies to enable such companies to embark on road construction for the benefits Nigerians and urged the state governments to emulate the initiative in their respective States

According to him,” I am impressed with the work done on the 42.5km Obajana -Kabba concrete Road constructed by Dangote Group. The project cost was N11.5billion but awarded to Dangote Group on tax concession basis at N5.24billion . The difference of N6.2billion forms part of the Cooperate responsibility of Dangote group .”

The Managing Director of the agency Engr. Nurudeen Rafindadi while defending the N24.698 billion appropriated for 2019 budget of the agency said that only N5.95 billion was released for capital projects.

He further told the lawmakers that the agency was spending a large chunk of its annual budget on personnel emoluments and added that most of the projects executed by it were done by direct labour as contracted jobs were not always of good quality.

Other lawmakers in the Committee notable Sen.Betty Apiafi and Hon. Vincent Ofumelu also expressed worries on the terrible state of federal roads across the country despite huge budgetary allocation for their rehabilitations.