Senator representing Cross River South Senatorial District, Gershom Bassey, has called for the release of N1 trillion owed the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) to fix the 36,000-kilometre roads across the 36 states of the federation.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on FERMA decried the debts owed, given that road is a critical infrastructure that plays a pivotal role in revamping the economy.
The lawmaker spoke after plenary where he earlier moved a motion through Orders 41 and 51 of the Senate Standing Orders, lamenting the spike in local airfares in Nigeria which have risen by 63 percent.
He revealed that his Committee discovered a whopping sum of N850 billion owed FERMA as of 2019, stating that since then till now, it would have risen to N1 trillion.
He said: “You talked about N850 billion. This is the debt owed contractors and FERMA law has been amended in 2007 and we thought about five percent petroleum pump price going to FERMA to assist them. This was the solution of the then National Assembly and this was beautiful, but has never been implemented for some reason. As long as it’s a law, it’s debt because money is being owed FERMA.
“When you calculate up to to 2019 what is being owed FERMA, it’s up to 2019 and if you take that up to 2022, it may run to a trillion.
“Imagine if you pump a trillion into road maintenance, in a country that has 36,000 kilometres of federal roads, hardly everybody will fly, rather, they will like to travel by road. If you talk about critical infrastructure to revamping our economy, these are the things we talk about.”
According to him, the parliament was doing its best, but the executive needed to follow up for the nation to have good roads.
“As you are aware, if you have followed Senate last week, Senate has actually set up a Committee under the leader of the Senate which comprises, Committee on FERMA, Petroleum Downstream Committee and National Planning to dig deeper so as to reveal the investigation that we have done as a joint Committee.
“Yes, there is a follow-up action, but this was before the increase in airfare. The airfare increase, we only heard about it during the weekend and if it carried through, you can imagine the kind of impact it would create.
“The compression on the road, because so many people who would hitherto travel by air may not by air anymore and may go by road.
“Even those that can afford may probably prefer to go by road if they can afford it.
“So, that is what the motion is all about.
“Let us fix our roads so that people can travel by road. It is not a new thing in Nigeria. I used to drive from here to Calabar in about seven hours. You can get to Cross River State in four hours and that is not so now.
“The mode of transportation is either air for those that can afford it, but the bulk of the people across the nation is by road. What has happened is either the increase in airfare has shown a very bad light on this problem of fixing our roads in Nigeria.
“We also talk about the budget for FERMA. It’s less than 20 percent of the entire budget just to maintain our roads on yearly basis. We are at a critical stage and I think the government should do something about funding road repairs and infrastructure.”
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