{"id":6815,"date":"2015-12-08T23:00:58","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T23:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=6815"},"modified":"2015-12-08T23:00:58","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T23:00:58","slug":"fg-to-re-introduce-toll-gate-on-nigeria-highways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=6815","title":{"rendered":"FG To Re-Introduce Toll Gate On Nigeria Highways"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, says the Federal Government will re-introduce highway tolling to raise additional funds to finance road infrastructure and ensure efficient road maintenance.
\nMr. Fashola said this on Tuesday in Abuja during his first news conference tagged \u201cSetting the Agenda for Delivering Change\u201d.
\nHe said that adequate funding of the nation\u2019s road infrastructure would generate job opportunities and reduce unemployment in the country.
\n\u201cMaintenance would be our watchword. We are setting up a robust maintenance regime to keep our highways in good shape.
\n\u201cThis shows that tolling is necessary to support government funding. So, it will not be too much if we ask every road user to pay little to augment government funding for road maintenance.
\n\u201cIt is eminent commonsense for us to find that money. We will use technology; so if we don\u2019t pay cash, you will pay by tokens or tickets and the money is accountable and it will go to the right place.
\n\u201cWe will manage that fund properly and we will hold those who we put there to account,\u201d the minister said.
\nTolling was scrapped by former President Olusegun Obasanjo after his administration imposed fuel tax. Since then, attempts to restart the policy failed.
\nMr. Fashola said as a short-term strategy, the ministry would start with quick completion of ongoing inter-state roads in order to facilitate connectivity, before working on those that bear heavy traffic.
\n\u201cWe commit all our skills, energies, and collective integrity unreservedly to playing our part, but how much success we deliver is dependent also on the citizens\u2019 commitment to their own part,\u2019\u2019 he said.
\nThe minister observed that lack of funding had caused many construction companies to retrench their workers due to the huge debts owed them by the various tiers of government.
\nHe said that with adequate budgetary allocations, the three ministries have an enormous role to play in repositioning the economy and creating jobs.
\n\u201cClearly, good roads will help reposition and grow our economy, reduce travel time, cost of transportation of goods and services, and restore jobs that have been lost to transport-dependent services.
\n\u201cSome of the numbers from only four construction companies that were sampled, suggest that at least 5,150 workers have been laid off as at March 11, 2015.
\n\u201cIf each contractor has only 100 employees at each of the 200 contract sites, it means at least that 20,000 people who lost their jobs can return to work. If the right budget is put in place and funded for contractors to get paid.
\n\u201cThe possibility to return those who have just lost their jobs back to work is the kind of change that we expect to see by this short-term strategy.\u201d
\nMr. Fashola further said that the ministry would soon embark on enforcement of the right of way by dismantling all illegal structures infringing on the highways.
\nHe advised persons infringing on the right of way to voluntarily dismantle the inappropriate structures before the government commenced the demolition of such structures.
\n\u201cIn order to make the roads safer, we intend to re-claim the full width of all Federal roads, representing 16 per cent and about 36,000km of Nigeria\u2019s road network.
\n\u201cWe are immediately now asking all those who are infringing on our highways, whether by parking, trading, or erection of any inappropriate structure to immediately remove, relocate or dismantle such things voluntarily.
\n\u201cThis will be the biggest contribution that citizens can offer our country as proof that we all want things to change for the better,\u201d the minister said.
\n(NAN)
\nShare this:\"Buhari\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, says the Federal Government will re-introduce highway tolling to raise additional funds to finance road infrastructure and ensure efficient road maintenance. Mr. Fashola said this on Tuesday in Abuja during his first news conference tagged \u201cSetting the Agenda for Delivering Change\u201d. He said that adequate funding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[365,1042,197,1043],"class_list":["post-6815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-babatunde-fashola","tag-minister-of-power","tag-mohammadu-buhari","tag-works-and-housing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Buhari1.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-1LV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6816,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815\/revisions\/6816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}