Toll Gates Should Not Be Re-Introduced

The Federal Government has said it will introduce toll plazas on the nation’s highways as from next year. This is coming from the Minister of Works Mike Onolememen who disclosed this at an interactive session with members of the Senate Committee on Works.

He went further to say that abrogating the toll plazas across the country was a disservice to road maintenance while justifying the re-introduction of the toll plazas as a means to generate funds for regular rehabilitation of the nation’s highways.

Also, the minister revealed that government was considering the possibility of establishing a national road authority and a road fund. We ask, ‘what will FERMA be doing?’ Doesn’t this appear to be multiple taxation of the citizenry who are held hostage by all sort of obligations from private to public? What happened to all the funds that went down the drain in federal government’s bid to make the road worthy to ply on? How long are we going to be managing fraud and inefficiency of a flawed system?

We applaud the National Assemble effort to compel the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency on roads. This is the right step in the right direction. Apart from this, we have to go back and look at what went wrong with the roads and redressed it.

Only then can we venture into this business of re-introducing toll plazas. Government should remember that her policy trusts seem geared to taking money from financially wreaked citizens, we ask that it demonstrates efficiency and effectiveness in social services delivery and then we can begin toll gate business. For funding isn’t the issue, corruption is.