According to Senator David Umahi, Minister of Works, companies building roads with asphalt must enter into a 30-year indemnity agreement with the ministry.
At a news conference to discuss the overall direction of the ministry during his tenure, Umahi said this on Monday in Abuja, according to NANA.
Contractors using asphalt, he claimed, would not be prevented, but they had to sign a durability contract.
However, the minister stated that already awarded projects would not be required to build concrete roadways.
He continued by saying that although concrete roads would survive longer, contractors would need to guarantee that asphalt roads would endure up to 30 years.
“We aren’t stopping the asphalt construction, but paying for a job that we know won’t last for five years is not realistic.
“Contractors hide behind the absurd defense that they are overloading since the road isn’t there for very long.
“Enough with contractors performing dodgy work and getting paid for it. Nigeria must receive value for the money given as tax.
With the exception of the concrete road I built in Ebonyi, we have had success constructing concrete roads that, when done correctly, survive for 50 years.
In fact, the African Development Bank-funded Abakaliki Ridgeway Road was completed before he left government, he claimed.
However, Umahi expressed issue about the way Nigeria’s budgetary allocation was set up, saying that it did not encourage contractors to quickly complete federal road projects.
“When you pay a contractor N150,000,000 each year for an N600,000,000 road project, he will pocket the money while mobilizing to the site without performing any work there.
When pressed, he would claim that he had not yet received the materials he had asked for from abroad because the funds were insufficient.
He urged the National Assembly to release the more than N650 billion it had withheld for various projects around the nation, which he claimed were nearly finished but were still being held up by a lack of funding that was holding the contractors on the job sites.
According to Umahi, if these money were not reimbursed, the roads would not be finished, and this would have a detrimental effect on the economy.
The minister suggested that members of the National Assembly who represented various senatorial districts meet with the governors of those states to identify the top priorities that may be finished by the deadline.
He argued that planting commercial trees and cash crops along road corridors will help reduce the number of incidents of citizen kidnapping along highways.
“Nigerians must receive value for their taxes; roads are essential; abduction occurs in areas with poor roads; we should cut down bushes and plant cash crops in those areas.
“It is wonderful and appropriate, and we ought to implement it across the nation. The kidnappings will stop, he claimed.
In order to ensure that any intervention in states would be done with the input of the state government, he continued, the ministry would examine the ways in which the Federal Road Management Agency (FERMA) operates.
He claimed that this will define the state governments’ top priorities.
