Expressway

  President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration has declared it will toll all major roads in the country upon completion of construction and renovation. Minister of Works, David Umahi disclosed this on Thursday in Abuja at an Inter-Ministerial Press Briefing, part of activities to mark Nigeria’s 64th independence anniversary. “We have the Lagos-Ibadan (Expressway), we are completing it and we are tolling it,” he said. He listed some of the roads as Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger Bridge, Abuja-Kano Road, and Makurdi-9th Mile, among others. The former Ebonyi State governor said the tolling of federal roads “is going to bring a lot of money to the Federal Government”. Umahi said private sector members have been engaged “to bring in funds, construct these roads, work with the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Works to toll these roads”. The minister said the government would start with the Keffi-Makurdi Road that has been completed, stating that his ministry has been engaging with the Ministry of Finance for a paperless mode of payment. He said, “For example, we are completing the Lagos-Ibadan, we are working on Makurdi to 9th Mile in Enugu State, we are working from Abuja to Lagos. These roads are going to be tolled. But we are not just tolling them, we are bringing confidence in the use of these roads. “If people can travel at night because we are bringing security, where the response time will be 10 minutes on the entire corridor, where you have solar light permanently there and then reduce travel time, and through the tolling, the roads are maintained, then, there will be confidence because Nigerians will pay if the roads are good.” He said before now, road developments have not been handled as investments but the administration of President Bola Tinubu has been handling road developments more professionally. Meanwhile, in April, the minister hinted that the government will likely charge an average of N3,000 per toll gate for vehicles using the Lagos-Calabar coastal road upon its completion. Umahi said, “Let me leave out the infrastructure along the corridor. Let me just concentrate on the tolls and I put 50,000 vehicles as an average passage on these toll points per day,” Umahi said on the breakfast show. “I put N3,000 as an average cost. N3,000 because the cars could be like N1,500, and the big trucks could be like N5,000,” he said. “So, we put an average”. “In 15 years, you make back the money,” he said, dismissing calls that the cost budgeted for the road project was high. The minister noted that there will be security at the toll gates and also some facilities like filling stations. He said, “At every point of tolling, we also have toll station where we have a kind of relief activities: the restaurants, filling stations, parking lots, and so on and so forth.’’ “So, people will now have confidence. In these sections, we intend to put CCTV all through.”