The necessity of an excellent road network for overall national development is so obvious that it can only be considered unconscionable that any government does not make it a priority. That will be the government undeserving to be so designated. Alas, in this particular respect, Nigeria can be held up as a case study in government dereliction.
On a recent tour of the roads in the South-east geopolitical zone, Minister of Works, David Umahi, said he “shed tears at the kind of pains our people are going through.” This is after he had spent 14 hours on the Abuja to Benin trip going through Lokoja. The road in the eastern part of the country came into sharp focus for many reasons, not the least of which is the October 1, 2023, accident in which a petrol–loaded vehicle lost control and burst into flames while navigating an especially bad portion of the inter-state road between Ologbo in Edo State and Koko Junction in Delta State.
Press reports put immediate loss at five lives, eight buses, two tankers, two cars and one motorcycle. But the bad condition of roads is not at all limited to the South-east region. Indeed, this portion of the Sapele–Benin road is described as travellers’ nightmare.
In the South-west zone, the 120 kilometres Lagos–Ibadan expressway took four administrations decades and goodness-knows how many billions of naira it took to repair it into a reasonably good condition. But many important federal roads that link the zone to the northern part of the country are in states that can only be described as deplorable. Three examples: the Ibadan-Ife –Ilesha-Akure road is so bad in parts that drivers have to illegally drive one-way, at great risk of accident; the Osogbo-Ilesa road is reportedly in a bad state and thereby expose slow-moving vehicles to terrorist attacks; a 40 kilometres Oyo-Iseyin federal road that was constructed in 1915 into the agriculturally productive area is now reported to be so ‘impassable’ as to force travellers to take a 126 kilometer alternative route through Ibadan to Oyo.
In the northern part of Nigeria, youths of Niger State under the aegis of National Youth Council of Nigeria (NTCN) once had cause to demonstrate in protest of the poor state of the Suleja-Minna and Bida-Minna roads and the attendant risk and hardship that travellers suffer.
It bears repeating: the utmost necessity of a good road infrastructure – and its attendant benefits – are so obvious to all reasonable people that it is most strange that successive governments in Nigeria just ‘don’t get it’, so to say. The economic benefits are many, the good it serves for security is clear, and the human convenience is incalculable.
Since the dawn of civilisation, man has developed good road networks so that people, goods, and services could move quickly and efficiently around territories. George Guest writes in his 1979 book The March of Civilisation that ‘[to] increase his revenues, Darius [the Great (521-485 B.C) and the third Emperor of Persia] encouraged trade and industry [by constructing] excellent roads throughout the length and breadth of the empire.
One such highway stretching from Asia Minor to the Aegean Sea continued to be an important trade route for a thousand years’. On the Roman empire, the author writes that ‘linking up town with town were the Roman roads [through which] vast wealth was conveyed to Rome from the conquered provinces’; about the European colonisers, he says that [the] introduction of railways and good roads led to the rapid development of the natural resources of Africa.’ The rural road networks constructed by the then Premier of Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to enable the transportation of produce from the farms and the plantations served unquantifiable economic benefits to both the farmers and the region. Many of these roads are still identifiable and in use.
Good roads aid the security of the state; this much even rulers of ancient empires knew. Security forces can be quickly dispatched to pacify restive parts of the country to maintain peace. It may be recalled that, in February 2021, the then Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor lamented that bad roads were a hindrance to the effective prosecution of the war against terrorism in the Northeastern part of the country. Not mincing words, he said ‘Accessing the road network is the issue and this is not the job of Operation Lafiya Dole. There cannot be good governance without a good road network.’
The constitutional duty of the State through the machinery of government to provide infrastructure that facilitates human and material productivity and development is, directly or indirectly, expressed in various sections of the Constitution. Section 16 (1)(a) requires the State to ‘harness the resources of the nation and promote national prosperity and an efficient, a dynamic, and self-reliant economy’; and Section 16(2)(a) enjoins ‘the promotion of a planned and balanced economic development’. The point must be made, however, that the actualisation of these constitutional dictates are the responsibilities of not only the executive arm of government, but of the legislature as part of its role in law making ‘for the peace, order, and good government of the Federation or any part thereof.’
But the building and maintenance of roads is not the responsibility of the Federal Government alone. The states and the local governments are constitutionally empowered to construct roads according to the genuine needs of their areas of jurisdictions. Researcher Olusegun Toluhi stated in his paper on: “Road Sector Reforms in Nigeria” that as at April 2016, there were 194,200 km of roads in the country with the Federal Government share as 34,120km, (17.6 per cent), States 30,500 km (15.7 per cent), and Local Government Councils 129,580km (66.6 per cent).
That a country of over 923,700 square kilometers has less than 200,000 kilometres of road network to serve its over 200 million citizens is ridiculous: it implies the low priority that the country accords both infrastructure and economic development, and national security. And yet, huge sums are appropriated annually by the three tiers of government to build or repair roads. In the past 24 years of representative democracy, N2.4 trillion is reported to have been spent on road infrastructure with, characteristic of the way of Nigerian governments, little to show for the money. To boot, an incredible N14 trillion is said to be owed to contractors for work on 2,604 roads of 18,000 kilometres!
Despite the numerous documents on policy and plans of action in respect of road transportation over the years, only in this country is the building of roads made to seem like building a spacecraft to a distant star. But in truth, it is not. Small countries and big countries build good roads in record time and at modest costs too. Not here, as the Lagos-Ibadan expressway proves! Indeed, as Toluhi noted, with, it may be assumed, a sense of lament, ‘Nigeria seems to be the only large economy in sub-Saharan Africa that is yet to embrace reforms in the management of its road assets.’
As far back as 2004, the National Economic Empowerment and Strategy (NEEDS) blueprint on ‘Road Infrastructure’ committed the Obasanjo administration to ‘complete ongoing construction of 3,000 km network of roads, and embark on any new construction if and when fund-specific assistance is available; strengthen the newly created roads maintenance agency and involve the private sector in the management of roads’. That was 20 years ago.
To be continued tomorrow.
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