Nigeria’s Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen says the country needs about N600 billion to build 14,000km of roads annually if it is to meet the Vision 20:20:20 goals.
The Minister, who stated this during a one-day public lecture organised by the Association of Professional Women Engineers in Abuja, said there was need to increase the network of roads in the country.
He said, “for Nigeria to move towards a sustainable economy commensurate with Vision 20:2020, there is the need to increase the total road network from the current 200,000km to 300,000km by 2020 and the paved network also needs to be increased from the current 65,000km to over 200,000km by the year 2020”.
Onolememen noted that the situation would require the construction or paving of an average of 14,000km of roads every year at the cost of N600 billion per year.
The point has been made several times that Nigeria cannot overcome its road infrastructure development challenges unless necessary reforms are embarked upon to reposition the road sector to meet up up with the developed world.
“The Vision 20:2020 requires that Nigeria attains a GDP of at least, 900 billion dollars by the year 2020 and GDP per capital of at least 4, 000 dollars; experience has shown that there is a direct link between economic growth, the size and condition of road networks.
“Thus, for every one dollar spent on road maintenance, there is a corresponding increase in the nation’s GDP. The nexus between road development and economic growth made it imperative for the improvement of road network in new ways”, he stated.
Source:Daily post
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