The Roads In Nigeria Are Global Standards – Fashola

Mr Babatunde Fashola, Minister of Works and Housing has come out to say that road construction in Nigeria is carried out based on universal global standard.

He revealed this recently while speaking in Abuja on the achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari administration in the transport sector.

According to him, the ministry uses polymer modified bitumen on the Lagos-Ibadan and Enugu-Port Harcourt roads, rather than the 60/70 bitumen because it is stronger and ensures high standard.

He added that the percentage of roads constructed under the current federal budget will depend on the angle one is judging from, because if we report on the cash side of government, it will be about 75 per cent since the government has received only third quarter release of 100.

His words, “I think we don’t have our standards, roads are constructed to a universal global standard and those standards are not made by Nigeria, they are uniform standards.

“You can have a minimum and a maximum, in many cases we have reached some maximum because of the quality of finishing they have applied,”

“It depends on how you want to report, if you want to report cash side of government, it will be about 75 per cent because we have received only third quarter release and that is 75 per cent of 100.

“But, if you want to measure actual work done, we have done more than 100 per cent.”

“Sometimes, if you budget N1 million, the construction company will do N5 million work, that is why we owe more than what is in the budget.

“It is important to understand this, construction companies don’t keep building materials, they don’t keep laterite, gravel, granite, sand and cement, they make order of such materials any time we pay.”

“What is important is that the SUKUK projects are equally divided across the geopolitical zones, but length of roads in each zone is not exactly the same.

“SUKUK is like some form of public-private partnership and investment to supplement government budget because budget is not enough.

“So, we limit it to specific roads and most roads that are benefiting from the SUKUK are those roads that we normally have problems with.”