By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola has enjoined governments at all level to set aside contingency fund for emergencies like the collapsed Lokoja-Kabba highway.
He also revealed that the Federal Roads Maintainance Agency (FERMA) has been directed to move quickly to assess the damaged road with the aim of rehabilitating it.
Addressing State House Correspondents on the collapsed Lokoja-Kabba road
after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday, Fashola described the incident as unavoidable.
The former Lagos State Governor insists that the prevailing rainy season has made such occurrence inevitable, adding that rainy season is not a good period road users.
Said he: “Again, my understanding I will share. Nobody that I know in the transport sector rest easy during bad weather. Whether you’re in aviation, rail, road, once there is bad weather either it is snow, hurricane, heavy rainfall, tornadoes nobody rest easy.
Things change, flights can be cancelled, train schedules change, roads fail. So this is our very, very difficult season. As we go through the rainy season, this is the context in which to locate the Lokoja-Kabba.
It’s a failure caused by nature and aging. And, again, an opportunity to share with you what we have. We expect that these things will happen, but we don’t know where it will happen every time.
So we’ve been proposing that Nigeria should have an emergency provision in the works budget, but we haven’t been successful enough. There must be a contingency, a sizable sum, because when we see failures, last year, we had a problem like that in Kebbi, where roads were washed away.
We couldn’t respond because we didn’t have the resources. But we will lean on FERMA.
So the first thing to do always the Controllers (of Works) in each state, are the President’s Ambassadors or Ministry’s Ambassadors, in those states, and we continue this interaction and education with them.
And once these problems arise, go out there, acknowledge that you are representative and tell the people what you plan to do. There’s a sense of relief, that somebody stepped forward to take responsibility.
So our Controller has responded. But I’m sure that they will go back there and communicate to the people of Kogi state what our response plan will be.
We’re already talking to FERMA, we are seeing resources that we can deploy. We’re also talking to contractors in the area who we have contracts with what stablization and remedial efforts we will make there, because we’re diverting traffic to alternate roads”.
Asked to add a figure to the desired contingency, Fashola said: “Well, traditionally back in Lagos when I was governor, I think we used to provide about five 5% of our capital expenditure as a contingency fund for emergencies. Something between three and 5% varies across the world”.
