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Nigerian roads have outlived their design life – Fashola

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-Fashola declares not all Nigerian roads are bad.

-The minister also identified the different categories of roads in Nigeria and government efforts targeted at making the road safer for all categories of road users.

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Bad Nigerian roads will receive due government attention.

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Tuesday called on Nigerians to be objective in their judgement of Nigerian roads as many of the roads are not as bad as people are suggesting.

He also noted the efforts of the present administration which is targeted at making the roads more motorable and safer for all category of road users.

Fashola said these in his keynote address at a capacity building programme for the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), which was sponsored by the United Nation.

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The first category of roads identified by the minister are those that had outlived their design life and  should have been replaced and rebuilt.

The minister stated, “They were built in the 1970s, and not only have they outlived their design life, they have had to deal with tonnage and capacities well beyond what their design intended. Can such a road be truly expected to stay intact and deliver a pleasant motoring experience?

“Thankfully, these type of roads are now receiving attention under President Buhari, as the Calabar-Itu-Odukpani, Gombe-Biu, Ilorin-Jebba and other roads that fall within this category are being awarded for reconstruction, along with the third class of roads, which are just being built.”

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Another category of roads identified by Fashola, are those in need of maintenance having suffered years of lack of maintenance and apparent expected depreciation.

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He said, “Members of the public must know that roads are depreciating assets. They do not last forever and require regular maintenance and, with time, replacement, if they are to serve their intended purpose. These factors of abuse and lack of maintenance combine to reduce the quality of our motoring experience on the roads.

“With this background, I will now pose the question: How bad are our roads? Some have repeatedly said, ‘All the roads are bad.’ That is not true. We have good parts and bad parts caused by abuse and lack of maintenance.”

“I undertook a tour of our roads earlier this year to see things for myself. We went by road and travelled in two buses, driving for at least 12 hours every day. We left at 8am daily and drove until 8pm at the least. On one occasion, we drove for 18 hours, from 8am to 2am the following day.

“We drove through different sections of roads that had outlived their design life, those that are within their design life with failures in some cases, and those that are currently under construction.”