Politics
NIGER government has called to the Federal government to come to its aid in rehabilitating deplorable Federal roads in the state.
Mr Abubakar Balarabe, Permanent Secretary of the state Ministry of Works and Infrastructure Development, made the call while inspecting some collapsed bridges along Minna-Bida road on Saturday.
He explained that the call became necessary following continuous collapse of bridges and roads in the state and the huge amount of money involved in repairing them.
Balarabe said that there were about 11 bad spots along the Bida-Minna road that posed serious danger to motorists.
He attributed the bad state of the roads to the high number of heavy duty trucks plying it.
He appealed to the Federal government to hasten its intervention on the roads in order to ease the hardship by commuters.
“The state government has made several appeals to the Federal government to come to our aid because we have spent a lot of money on the rehabilitation of the roads, but due to the increasing pressure on them the roads keep getting bad.
“Due to the bad state of Mokwa-Tegina-Kaduna road, heavy trucks have resorted to using Bida-Minna road, thereby constituting much pressure and danger for other smaller vehicle users,” he said.
The permanent secretary, who noted that the Bida-Minna road was constructed about 30 years ago and had gone beyond its life’s span, appealed to the Federal government to find a permanent solution to bad roads in the state.
Malam Umaru Salawu, a truck driver, said in an interview, that they have resorted to plying Bida-Minna road because the Mokwa-Tegina road that links the South-West states with North-West had gone bad.
Salawu, who said he was coming from Maro and heading to Lagos, appealed to the Federal government to fix the dilapidated roads so as to reduce pressure on the Bida-Minna-Suleja road.
“If the roads are not fixed, we will park our trucks until the roads are fixed,” he said.
Another road user, Mr Anthony Joshua, described the roads as “death traps for people plying them”, and appealed to the Federal government to intervene as well as restrict movement of trucks at night.
He blamed the deplorable state of Bida-Minna-Suleja road to the number of trucks using the road as alternative route because of the bad state of other Federal roads in the state.
“Before now these trucks used to go through Birnin-Gwari axis, but because the road is bad, they have resorted to this one thereby putting pressure on the road and it has gotten bad too,” he said.
Malam Mohammed Aliyu, a road user from Bida, said that the road was no longer motorable and appealed to the state and Federal government to intervene by repairing the road to ease their sufferings.
NAN
Aug. 24, 2019 @ 15:25 GMT
Tags: Niger govt. tasks FG on repairs of deplorable federal roads
