IRKED by the frequent failure of roads projects across the country, the Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) and Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) have called on the Federal Government to set up an engineering inquiry to investigate the issue.The grouse stems from the fact that Nigerian roads begin to fail no sooner than they have been commissioned. The organisations further urged construction companies and all engineers involved in road construction to maintain high level of professionalism and international standards in the execution of their various projects.At an interactive session with Directors of Civil/Highway Engineering in the federal and state Ministries of Works recently in Abuja, COREN President, Mustapha Bulama, an engineer, lamented that the engineering profession for sometime has been embarrassed by the rate of failure of engineering projects, adding that the most visible and of utmost concern is the issue of failure of road projects.Bulama observed that over 80 per cent of government's capital budget yearly goes into engineering infrastructure, adding that government is worried that it is not getting value for money in its investments.He noted that the nation's roads have become death valleys, with alarming statistics of road accidents, adding that the roads that have been built are failing so fast while the cost of embarking on new roads or maintaining existing ones is becoming too huge for government to bear.He said; 'It has become the order of the day in recent times that no sooner has a road project been commissioned than it begins to fail. We must ask ourselves, are we less professionals today than engineers that built roads and bridges in the 60s, 70s and 80s' Why then are our own projects failing before meeting half of the design period' Why is the cost of road construction so exorbitant now and are we getting value for money for our projects'In his address, the President of NSE, Chief Olumuyiwa Ajibola said there are myriad of political issues associated with road failures, stressing that if all the issues come out from proper engineering inquiry, the political issues would be addressed.He said, 'Such political issues include: How much money are you providing for the roads, how do you determine which roads to spend money on, Will you because somebody is coming from one corner, you deploy resources from a more viable road to a road that is not viable, what is the budgeting process and how are roads managed and funded'Ajibola urged the Federal Government to adopt the template being used in some parts of Africa and Europe where Road Fund and Road Authority template have worked by setting up a Road Fund and Road Authority in order to address the problem of roads in the country.'If we look at Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Malaysia and some parts of Europe, the Road Fund and Road Authority is the best whereby the Road Fund is packaged in a way that it can always be sustainable. Some of the monies come from road users, some from petroleum consumed by road users, and some from government, so money for road construction does not go through budgetary barriers.
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