The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has identified insurgency, road-users’ abuses among others as challenges undermining road infrastructure development in the country and called for other sources of funding road projects.
He made this known on Thursday at the 29th Meeting of the National Council on Works in Calabar with the theme, Infrastructure as the Pathway for Prosperity.
The meeting was attended by various stakeholders such as permanent secretaries, directors of work, commissioners of works, among others.
Fashola, who was represented by the Minister of State, Works and Housing, Engr Abubakar Aliyu, said “The need to look beyond public budgets and the clamour for other funding sources for road projects are recurring decimals in the literature of Nigerian highways development.
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“The challenge of insurgency in some parts of the country, road-users’ abuses like the uncontrollable excessive axle loads by trucks, unauthorised use of Federal Roads Right-of-Ways, and many other problems which are begging for solutions can be explored to create a pathway for prosperity.”
He said the theme for the meeting “was carefully chosen to address the complex issues of road infrastructure development in our dear country towards proffering tangible solutions, comfortable environment to sustain business and the effects of giving the people back what they actually deserve as citizens of our great nation.”
Fashola said the expectations of the public in the road sector is ever-increasing and over 90 per cent of passengers and freight movements in the country travel by road, adding that
“Our mandate in this meeting is to find new enduring possibilities on how to establish the link between infrastructure development and job creation, poverty alleviation, wealth creation and empowerment of the informal sector among others in ensuring that the 10 million jobs target per annun by Mr. President is attained.”
(PUNCH)
