By Miriam Humbe
The Minister of Works, Arc. Mike Onolememen has decried the negative impact of overloading on our major road corridors saying it is depleting the nation’s road assets and there is need to reverse the negative trend.
Onolememen said this while presenting the keynote address during the 21st National Council on Works themed: ‘Funding Road Development in Nigeria: A Panacea for Economic Transformation’, held at Asaba in Delta State during the weekend.
According to him, the federal government has invested huge sums of money in the maintenance, rehabilitation, reconstruction, and construction of roads and bridges across the country; these developments cost the federal government huge sums of money.
Onolememen said government is worried over the trend, “more so, when it is situated against the backdrop that over 90% of freight transportation in our country is by road, using trailer trucks and tankers that are more often overloaded”.
“While the cumulative project cost of our on-going federal roads projects nationwide stands at about N1.765trillion, the asset value of our road network is estimated at aboutN7trillion. These huge investments and assets need to be protected”, he said.
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