The Senate on Thursday scrapped the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) on the basis that the agency lacked capacity to deliver on its mandate of fixing the deplorable state of roads nationwide.
In its place, the upper legislative chamber replaced the fifteen-year-old agency with the Federal Roads Authority (FRA) following a recommendation of its Senate Committee on Works, which repealed FERMA law and established a semi-autonomous road maintenance agency which would ensure that road maintenance is efficiently carried out across the country, going forward.
“Following the presentations at the Public Hearing and submissions made to the Committee, it was generally agreed that there was need to establish the Federal Road Authority to replace the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency which had little in terms of contribution to the economic well-being of the nation and weak institutional framework”, the Committee recommended in its report adopted at plenary Thursday.
The bill proposed the use of proceeds from the yet-to-be established National Roads Fund, in addition to government funding obligations in road maintenance as sources of revenues for the Authority.
Presenting the report, chairman of the panel and sponsor of the bill, Kabiru Gaya, said the objective of road sector reform proposed in the Federal Roads Authority Bill aims to move away from legacy governance structures and establish the private sector as a financing partner in road infrastructure through concession and Public-Private Partnership arrangements.
FRA will serve as a semi-autonomous road agency responsible for the professional management of federal roads in the country involving planning, design, construction, rehabilitation and maintenance.
The Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) was established by an Act of the National Assembly in 2002 and amended in 2007, but many are concerned that the agency has so far failed to live up to its responsibility considering the extend of bad road network all over the country.
The development comes at a time a Professor of Economics at the Lagos Business School, Doyin Salami, submitted that Nigeria needs N31trillion yearly for infrastructure spending.
“Government cannot on its own fund infrastructure. Available statistics revealed that Nigeria needs $100bn or N31trillion on yearly basis to fund infrastructure as against the N3trillion to N5trillion being spent by government across the three tiers on yearly basis with attendant infrastructural deficit, high rate of employment and other worrying indices like over 17percent inflation rate,” Salami submitted in his keynote address at the first anniversary of the National Assembly Business Environment Roundtable (NASSBER) in Abuja.
The expert who decried the nation’s infrastructural deficit arising from gross inadequate funding by government at all levels, expressed concern that Nigeria may be heading for doom if the enabling environment is not given the private sector to drive the nation’s economy.
The Federal Roads Authority Bill is one of the 13 high priority economic reform bills currently before the National Assembly for passage.
Others are: National Inland Waterways Authority Bill, National Roads Funds Bill, National Transport Commission Bill, Nigerian Ports and Harbours Authority Bill, Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Bill and Nigerian Postal Commission Bill.
Also included are: Nigerian Railway Authority Bill, Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) (Amendment) Bill, Investment and Securities Act (Amendment) Bill, Secured Transactions in Moveable Assets Bill, Investment and Securities Act Bill and Independent Warehouse Regulatory Bill.
Of the 13 economic bills, only one: Secured Transactions in Moveable Assets Bill, has been signed into law.
In 2016, NASSBER reviewed 54 acts and 50 bills pending before the National Assembly, and rated them in order of priority to help the legislature focus more on areas that require urgent intervention.
The team of experts said the high priority bills would improve Nigeria’s ranking in the Ease of Doing Business report.
Nigeria ranks 169 out of 189 countries in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business 2017 ranking report.
Speaking with BusinessDay, an Abuja-based expert Taiye Odewale submitted that the proposal would end the duplication of functions between FERMA and the Highways Department of the Ministry of Works.
According to him, by sourcing for fund through other means, the Authority becomes a semi-autonomous body without over-reliance on government.
“FRA will be better than FERMA. Apart from rehabilitating, reconstructing, repairing the road, it will be able to find ways of sourcing for fund of maintaining whatever they have done and not replying fully on government. FERMA would go to sleep anytime government is not giving them money; it is only whatever government can afford that they give to FERMA.
“And based on what we have seen within the last 10 years, you can see that FERMA is overwhelmed. Because it is just an agency created for intervention, which can only be carried out if there is fund for that. But for Road Authority, I want to believe that both the Senate and House of Representatives would make it a full-fledged authority that will transcend the realm of road repair but also have the legal right to source for fund elsewhere”.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE
