Former Minister of Works, Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe, has advised that users’ fund should be introduced to rehabilitate deplorable roads in the state, insisting that Federal Government’s budget is not enough to address the problem.
He made this call while reacting to the accident that claimed some lives along Isagamu road recently.
?“This is not an issue for insult. Unless we do it the way it is done in other parts of the country, we can’t make headway. What we should do is to introduce road fund where all users will pay a certain amount of money to repair roads in the states because the entire budget of Lagos State is not enough repair the deplorable roads,” he said. “Users funds are used in other parts of the country and this assisted them to combat such problem. People lost their lives every day on our roads due inexperienced contractors we hire.”
The former minister insisted that Nigeria would never get it right if it did not make use of indigenous contractors and engineers.
“Until Nigerians, especially the engineers, are involved, we will never get it right in the area of road construction. Contractors which are capable of handling the jobs are out of the country; except Julius Berger, there is no internationally recognized road construction company in Nigeria anymore because our process of budgeting is anti-construction.”
Ogunlewe who was the minister of works during the President Obasanjo’s administration explained that issue of roads at the federal,? state, and local government levels had been addressed severally, and lamented that lack of continuity of government worsened the situation.??? “In 2004, Federal Government allocated lot of money to the Ministry of Works and
Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) to purchase equipment so that people in the ministry would be able to produce the necessary materials needed, such as rollers, graders, etc.
“The purpose is to partner with Nigerian Society of Engineers in order for them to form a consortium and attack these roads properly, but we prefer Indians and Lebanese that would not do it properly,” he stated, noting that these were only interested in profit-making.