The Centre for Anti-Corruption
and Open Leadership, CACOL, on Saturday berated the Federal Government over its
proposed move to reintroduce toll gates to bridge funding gaps for road
repairs.
Minister of Works and Housing,
Babatunde Fashola, who made the disclosure while addressing State House
correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday
said there is no law against toll plazas.
He added that some of the logistics
being worked out before the reintroduction include acquiring more lands that
will provide up to 10-lane plazas.
However, CACOL’s Executive
Chairman, Debo Adeniran condemned the proposed move.
In a statement signed by Adegboyega Otunuga, the Coordinator of CACOL’s Media
and Publications, Adeniran said: “We recollect what the then President Olusegun
Obasanjo’s regime stated when he scrapped toll gates on our highways nationwide
late in 2003 and implemented on 1st of January, 2004, to the effect that they
(The toll-gates) had not only outlived their usefulness and constituted
inconvenience to motorists, but also encouraged corruption. That exercise of
dismantling the toll-gates across the country, reportedly cost Federal Government
over N2bn (Two Billion Naira) tax payers’ money. We, therefore, wonder how much
of additional tax payers’ funds that ordinarily should be used in easing their
current socioeconomic problems, especially their suffering of travelling by
those roads that were in dilapidated state for long by giving them free fuel
vouchers for their endurance, rather than further extorting them.
“The fact of the matter is that
tolling means second or third taxation on the citizens as the roads are being
repaired and rehabilitated from the pool of tax already contributed by same
citizens, one way or the other while the rate payable on value added tax (VAT)
on all goods and services in the country has only of recent, being proposed for
an increase from five (5) percent to seven point two (7.2) percent. What this
clearly shows in today’s Nigeria is the fact that, ‘the beautiful ones are yet
to be born’ as far as leadership that addresses the suffering and frustration
of majority Nigerians is concerned. But some of us within the Civil Society
circle are not altogether surprised by the process that gave birth to an
outcome of this debilitating and anti-poor policy being vigorously pursued by a
known hater of the poor and a pseudo-Capitalist!
“In retrospect, here is a
Minister of Works, who for four (4) years superintended over the degeneration
and degradation of the roads and was only waiting for the right opportunity to
impose more hardship on the people like he did when presided over the affairs
of Lagos state. Instead of him to upgrade and expand the existing
infrastructure in Lagos to accommodate the mega population that conferred the
status of megacity on that state, he started to implement policies and
programmes that would easily frustrate the poor out of the state. Now that we
ought to persuade Nigerians that had either been frustrated out of the country
or made to commit suicide or taken to criminality to have a rethink and join in
the task of positively rebuilding the country, it is when the Minister of Works
wants to compound their woes.
“Aside the time, nay, man-hours
and resources wasted at toll gates as we have it on Lekki road in Lagos; the
queue at the plazas portend grave danger to life and property of road users as
such bottlenecks could be prone to devastating road accidents, especially with
fuel tankers or attacks by terrorists and insurgents. The Federal Government
under President Muhammadu Buhari should also devise a way of sampling the
opinion of end-users or those at the receiving end of any controversial government
policy before finally deciding to implement them. This is the hallmark of what
constitutes genuine democracy. This practice was even subsisting under the
military regime as citizens were given the opportunity to discuss the
desirability or otherwise of IMF loan/ SAP and their conditionality which
eventually led to rejection of the loan.”
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