By Perpetua Onuegbu
A good road network plays a vital role in the social economic life of any nation.
By linking producers to markets, workers to jobs, students to school, and the sick to hospitals, roads are vital to any development agenda, says the World Bank.
Unfortunately, despite the efforts of different tiers of government to provide this important infrastructure, poorly maintained roads, be it Federal HighWays (Trunk A), state government roads (Trunk B), or local government ones (Trunk C), bad roads still dot the length and breadth of the country.
Successive administrations made efforts to fix the state of the nation’s road infrastructure but their attempts did not yield the desired results.
One of the most audacious efforts to ensure a well-maintained road network and the construction of new ones in the country was through the Directorate of Food, Road, and Rural Infrastructure of the then Gen. Ibrahim Babangida regime.
The late Gen. Sani Abacha’s regime also had a special intervention fund, the Petroleum Trust Fund whose mandate also covered road repairs.
Perhaps what seems to be the most sustainable effort to that effect came in the shape of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency.
The past administration of Muhammadu Buhari also had its intervention plans through the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF); the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund, Sukuk Fund.
There was also the Road Infrastructure Tax Credit Scheme in addition to other multilateral loans/grants and collaboration with other government agencies such as the North East Development Commission as well as the Highway Development Management Initiative (HDMI).
The poor state of the roads which has defied these solutions has caused untold hardship to Nigerians as many met their untimely death as a result of avoidable accidents caused by failed portions of roads.
In some instances, criminals such as kidnappers and armed robbers take advantage of such portions to attack motorists.
According to media reports, in 2019, Nigeria ranked 191 out of 192 on deaths by road accidents in the World Health Organisation’s statistics.
The Officer, Federal Road Safety Corps says its operations have road accidents in the country, including bad road-induced ones.
Road accident data for the first six months of the year 2023, showed a total of 2,850 fatalities as against 3,375 in the same period in 2022, representing a 15.5 percent drop, according to Mr Bisi Kazeem, Assistant Corps Marshal, Corps Public Education, Federal Road Safety Corps.
One of the reasons for the poor state of the roads is the lack of durability. President Bola Tinubu’s administration has promised to address this through the use of concrete pavement in road construction and repairs.
According to the Minister of Works, Sen. Dave Umahi concrete pavements have a 50-year guarantee, exposure of subgrade, sub-base and base course to 60 days of vehicular movement and continuous sheep-foot rolling before requiring placement.
He assured that in adopting the initiative, there would be effective design of road infrastructure anchored on detailed reports of environmental site conditions and geotechnical reports.
Because of the faith, the administration has in the concrete pavement as a road construction option, Umahi further warned expatriate contractors that no shoddy job would be tolerated again in Nigeria.
“Concrete roads have a longer lifespan; they can withstand heavy traffic loads, low maintenance, less affected by temperature fluctuations.
“A lot of advantages accrue to the use of concrete to construct roads, concrete roads last longer, compared to asphalt roads, reducing the need for frequent repairs and maintenance.
“It is stronger and can withstand heavy traffic loads, it also has low maintenance,” Umahi said.
Umahi, however, stated that nobody was insisting that all ongoing road construction in the nation should be changed to concrete.
He said such could happen under some conditions, including roads constructed with asphalt pavement must be on the concrete shoulder, with an alternative design on the road shoulder.
Mr Hassan Saidu, National Chairman of the Nigerian Institution of Highway and Transportation Engineers, shares the same views as Umahi though with some caveats.
“Rigid pavements are not strange in Nigeria’s Highway practice. Both flexible pavements and rigid pavements have their advantages and disadvantages, adding both should be used where it is necessary.
“The choice of pavement should be based on engineering judgement, at the moment there are about 2,604 road projects totally about 18,000km at a total cost of N14 trillion according to the minister of works.
“For such a number of projects to be truncated and suddenly converted to rigid pavement projects, there will certainly be floodgates of litigations by contractors on the violation of contractual agreements.
“The experiences garnered over asphalt plants and other items of equipment used for the construction of flexible pavements would be discarded and this will amount to huge loss to the country’’, he cautioned.
Saidu said the challenges faced by road infrastructure in the country transcended the materials used in road construction and urged the Legislature and the Executive to ensure that the Road Sector Reform Bill was signed into law.
The bill, he said, provides a broader and more pragmatic solution to Nigeria’s road infrastructure deficiencies.
Mr Chukwudi Ezugu, the National Chairman of the Nigerian Institution of Civil Engineers (NICE), is conscious of the cost of embarking on concrete pavement road construction and maintenance.
“If the load on the road is quite high concrete pavement would be preferable, it is also more durable but the cost is much higher but flexible pavement also has a life span of 20-25 years.
“So, basically there are some roads which are arterial for high traffic. You may have to make that decision to make that investment.
“This will depend on the study because there are experts that study each of these situations with the client agreeing based on the economies and their serviceability.
“Nothing is permanent so, if you have to do a project that has to last for 20 to 25 years, it is possible that after that, you may even like to restructure the project in itself, redesign for one thing or the other,’’ Ezugu said.
As the debate for concrete and asphalt roads continues many Nigerians say they desire to have roads that are in good condition and would guarantee safety and ease of doing business.
(NANFeatures)
