We did not need Anthony Joshua’s accident to remind us all of the poor state of Nigeria’s roads. I hope President Tinubu comes up with a plan that looks like this in his New Year’s Day address

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Road infrastructure is essential in modern economies. Economic growth and development requires mobility and accessibility, so an ambitious dualisation programme is going to be launched in 2026

[2] In Nigeria, we erroneously tend to think that good roads just mean fancy flyovers and dual carriageways. What are most important in the country are the tarring of rural roads which link farms and villages with the local government headquarters. Our government will face this particular challenge with a gusto

[3] Nigeria has 774 local government areas and to address the problem, what we need to do is come up with a masterplan to link them together into a national network. Our federal works minister, will be inviting the chairmen of all 774 local government areas to a seminar in Abuja to discuss the matter

[4] Just to put everything into context, Nigeria currently has about 193,200km of tarred road. Now this compares with 950,974km in Indonesia. By 2030, we should aim to bridge this gap

[5] South Africa has 750,000km of tarred roads, which should embarrass us big time. That gulf is far too wide for comfort. Is it thus a surprise that we have so many accidents on our roads?

[6] Nigeria’s works minister, David Umahi, is pushing for the use of rigid pavement in road construction, as against the flexible pavement predominantly in use. We will step this up big time from 2026 onwards

[7] According to the minister this is due to the precarious state of flexible pavements in the country. A rigid pavement is a road surface overlaid with reinforced concrete, while a flexible or asphalt one has a bituminous (tar) overlay. We will launch a public works programme to affect this

[8] Asphalt roads are the most common type of paved roads in Nigeria. Whichever of the two types the minister goes for, he needs to make mass quantity his watchword

[9] I do not think it is over-ambitious to announce a national programme under which every single road in Nigeria will be tarred by 2030

[10] It appears that for this programme to work, however, we need to sort out local government autonomy. As long as state governors are getting local government allocations, this programme is dead in the water

ayoakinfe@gmail.com