FG Returns Toll Gates On Federal Roads
The Federal Government on Wednesday said that plans were at the advanced stage to return toll gates on the federal highways.
Recall that former President Olusegun Obasanjo had in 2003 abolished toll gates in Nigerian federal highways.
The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Council Chamber, Presidential Villa Abuja.
Fashola, flanked by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said there was no law that stopped the government from having toll gate on federal roads.
The Minister also said that the FEC gave approval for the revision of two road contracts that were awarded by the previous administration but without being cash-backed from N30. 3 billion to N46 billion.
The new cost was inconsistent with the reality of economic rates market price indices for roads inputs like cement, iron rods, diesel, petrol and lubricant and the changes that have taken place on the national economic stage with regard to those prices between 2010 and now
He said, “There is no reason why we can’t toll, there was a policy of the government to abolish tolls or as it were, dismantle toll plaza but there is no law that prohibits tolling in Nigeria today. We expect to return toll plazas, We have concluded their designs of what they will look like, what materials they will be rebuilt with, what new considerations must go into them.
“What we are looking at now and trying to conclude is how the bank end runs.”
He said that the government was also considering to eliminate the payment of cash by introducing electronic mode of payment.
The Minister further disclosed that government needed to acquire more lands to expand the width of the toll gates as it proposed to have a ten-lane.
According to him, “What we are looking out now and trying to conclude is how the bank end runs. And that is important because we want to limit significantly if not totally eliminate cash at the plazas while ensuring that electronic devices that are being used do not impede rapid movement.
“We are also now faced with the need to acquire more land to establish the width of the toll plazas because I believe we are looking at 10-lane plazas so that there can be more outlets. So we need to acquire more land, that is the work that is currently being done now.
“But let me also say that the expectation that collection of tolls will then produce the replacement cost of the road is perhaps not accurate because the traffic toll count that we have done on major highways does not suggest that there is enough vehicular traffic across all roads.
“The two or three heavy routes are the Lagos/Ibadan, Abuja/Kano, Abuja/Lokoja. Now, Lagos /Ibadan the heaviest traffic you will find is between Lagos and Shagamu, it is about 40 thousand vehicles. After Shagamu, heading to Ibadan drops to about 20 thousand. So most of it has gone eastward going towards Ondo and Ore and by the time you get Benin, the number significantly drops.
“It goes up again at the confluence where they are heading towards the Niger. So, you can see that it is not a static 50 thousand all the way. Same thing with Abuja, Kano, Zaria. After Kaduna, the traffic significantly drops. It is about 40 thousand there too but after Kaduna, it begins to drop by the time you get to Zaria.
“If you have driven to that road before, by the time you are driving between Zaria and Kaduna you see how thin the recurring number of vehicles you meet is and as you begin to head closer between Kaduna and Abuja, the number of vehicles begin to increase.
