Chairman, House Committee on Works in the House of Representative, Hon. Ora Ozomgbauchi, says Nigeria will need over a trillion naira to fix its roads. The lawmaker, who represents Ezeagu/Udi federal constituency of Enugu State told LEADERSHIP SUNDAY in Abuja that Nigeria has about 30 federal roads and would need almost a trillion naira to fix them.
According to the lawmaker, “the problem in the sector is the funding gap because when they award contract that will be completed in 38 months and the deadline is not met, the prices are reviewed. Look at the Abuja/Abaji road, when the contract was awarded, it was supposed to be completed before five years, it has lingered and has entered the 7th year and given the funding pattern in the budget, it could take another 5 year to complete. Once there is a funding gap there will be triple effects and requests from the contractors for upward review of the cost.”
Ozomgbauchi further stated that Nigeria was trying to migrate from asphalt road construction to concrete-based construction because analysis had shown that in terms of cost of concrete-based construction, the difference was only 10 per cent. In the long-run, it is cheaper and last longer.
On the lack of durability of Nigerian roads, Ozomgbauchi stated that government had not been appropriating enough funds for road construction. In his words: “Of course, there are other reasons like lack of capacity by the supervisory agents, engineers from the ministry of works to ensure that contractors are performing according to standard, lots of compromise on standard specified in the contract documents, are there, but the major cause of the poor state of roads is the funding gap.”