8yrs After ACN Condemn, Buhari of APC Reintroduces Toll Gates on Fed. Roads

 

Eight years after the Action Congress of Nigeria opposes the Re-Introduction of Toll gate system, the Federal Government has concluded plans to return toll Gate on  Federal  roads across  the country

Recall that on Thursday, November 10, 2011, Action Congress In a statement issued in Ilorin, Kwara state by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, described the plan of Former President Goodluck Jonathan as the latest in a string of obnoxious policies being pursued by the federal government, including the planned removal of fuel subsidy, the hike in electricity tariff, the single-tenure plan and the so-called Sovereign Wealth Fund.

ACN in 2011 further said that all it takes for a government that runs on ideas is to evolve creative ways of maintaining roads, especially those that have not been handed over to private investors under the BOT programme, instead of the fixation on toll collection on non-functioning roads.

"It is a cruel irony that the toll gates that were removed seven years ago when the roads in the country were still fairly motorable are to be reinstated now that the roads have virtually disappeared. Nigerians daily die on the traps that the roads have become, and all a government can say is that it will impose tolls on the same people. What style of governance is this?

”The ideal thing would have been for the government to begin a massive rehabilitation of the roads across the country, then allow Nigerians to ride freely on these roads for some time, if only to make up for the years they have suffered on the roads, before any contemplation of reinstating toll gates.

The new development was revealed during  Briefing of State House correspondents at the end of the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, the Minister of Works, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, said designs for the toll gates had already been made.

According to him, materials to be used for the toll gates had been factored into the design, adding that the design includes elimination of cash payment at the toll plaza.

Fashola, flanked by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said there was no law that stopped the government from having toll gate on federal roads.

He said, “There is no reason why we can’t toll, there was a policy of the government to abolish tolls or as it were, dismantle toll plaza but there is no law that prohibits tolling in Nigeria today.

We expect to return toll plazas, We have concluded their designs of what they will look like, what materials they will be rebuilt with, what new considerations must go into them.