Road Construction and Maintenance in Nigeria.

Roads form the backbone of social and economic activities in Nigeria by providing access to residences, markets, educational centres, health services, industrial layouts, airports, seaports, towns and cities, etc.  Hence, economic development is closely related to the extension and condition of the road network.  Generally, roads are the nations’ biggest public capital asset, representing between 15% and 30% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country. 

But in spite of their importance, roads in Nigeria are often poorly financed and managed, thereby resulting in increased vehicle operating costs, longer travel times, higher accident rates, more freight damage and additional road rehabilitation cost as maintenance is neglected or deferred.

In the early 1980s, only about 200,000 vehicles were on Nigeria roads.  Today the number has grown to over nine million.  Nigeria is getting more vehicles on the road, making construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of the roads absolutely essential. It is also worthy of note that our roads development and maintenance is by far not proportional to our increased population, which makes it increasingly impossible to satisfy a teeming population such as Nigerias. In addition to this, is the excessive axle loading on our roads, occasioned by the movement of heavy articles on the road that would have been moved by rail, e.g. steel billets, cement, iron and recently turbines!

In Nigeria, the huge investment in road infrastructure has not been met with a commensurate attention to the need for maintenance and asset preservation. As a result of years of neglect, the national road network is characterized by pavement and structural failures due to inadequate programmed routine and periodic maintenance or total neglect. 

In order for Nigeria to move towards a sustainable economy commensurate with vision 2020, it needs to increase the total road network from the current 193,000 to over 300,000km by 2020. The paved network will need to increase from the current 60,000km to over 200,000 by 2020. This requires the construction or paving of an average 14,000km of road every year requiring an estimated N600 billion per year.
The point has been made severally that Nigeria cannot overcome its road infrastructure development challenges unless necessary reforms are embarked upon to reposition the road sector and bring it to a level commensurate with its peers in the developed and emerging nations of the world.

The nexus between road development and economic growth made it imperative for the improvement of road network new ways, requiring a paradigm change.  CHANGE in the institutional structures that will separate policy, regulation, operation and management of roads will be pivotal to Road Sector Reform.
A better road reform will not only attract huge private sector funds to fill the funding gap in providing infrastructure in the country for sustainable road development, it will also lead to the creation of business opportunities for engineering professionals and help create millions of jobs in the industry, as well as other allied industries.