Nigeria needs to invest $300 billion over the next 30 years to deal with the lingering problem of urban transport infrastructure, according to the report of the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP) put together by the National Planning Commission (NPC). The nation would, over the first five years, be required to spend $6 billion on urban transportation to make any significant inroad. It would also, within the period, be required to invest $150 billion of the money on road and rail transport infrastructure, such as construction of bus lanes, walkways and bus stations and $120 billion to boost fleet management of buses, taxis and ferries. President Goodluck Jonathan, in 2012, while commissioning the African
Development Bank (AFDB) to review the country’s infrastructure, in order to provide a framework for an integrated plan, directed his cabinet to fuse these plans into a National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan.
The AFDB’s report, ‘An Infrastructure Action Plan for Nigeria,’ observed that the country’s infrastructure was decaying fast and needed urgent fixing. “Only 18 percent of Nigeria’s 197,000km road system is paved,” according to the report. In BusinessDay’s report of March 2, 2015, NIIMP was said to have estimated that 40 percent of federal roads were in poor condition or worse, and therefore, in need of rehabilitation. It further stated that 30
percent were in fair condition but in need of periodic maintenance, while about 27 percent were in good condition.” John Gbassa, chief executive
and managing director of WAO Global, a Nigerian company with business interests in Japan, told our reporter that all over the world, road infrastructure was central to economic growth. “It is at the core of good governance and public welfare.” Gbassa argued that any improvement in road infrastructure positively impacted a nation’s GDP. Nigeria has a national road network of about 200,000km and out of these, federal roads make
up 18 percent (35,000km), state roads 15 percent (17,000km), and local government roads 67 percent (150,000km). Investigations reveal that most local government roads are unpaved.
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The road sector accounts for about 90 percent of all freight and passenger movement in the country.
Although the federal road network constitutes 18 percent of the total national network, it accounts for about 70 percent of national vehicular and freight traffic. Against this backdrop, Nigeria’s current transport infrastructure is not aligned with the country’s aspiration to become one of the
world’s 20 largest economies by 2020.
MIKE OCHONMA
