The Country Director, World Bank Shubham Chaudhuri has disclosed that 87% of Nigeria Rural roads are currently in bad conditions.
Chaudhuri while speaking in Abuja on Tuesday at the Presidential Launch of the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project in Nigeria (RAAM) stated that even with current scale up, Nigeria is not near to what it need to achieve a functional rural road.
“Even with the current scale up, we are not going to near what Nigeria needs to achieve, we have about 200,000 kilometers rural roads all over Nigeria of which 87% are in bad condition that means 40,000kilometers are usable, so if you think about tackling that problem at scale that brings it to the issue of physical affordability”.
Meanwhile, Chaudhuri also stated that there should be institutional sustainable structure to ensure that roads are maintained to avert repetition, hence, government should pay attention to maintainance of these roads.
“We have said that before we disburse the funds for RAAMP we have asked states to institutional structures to have maintenance agencies to clarify how this will be sustained”.
He added that the Nigerian government should be visionary national program in the scale surrounding rural roads connectivity which is physically affordable when government at all levels contribute to development of rural roads.
“Our financing is a little bit of the contribution, when federal government comes in with there federal budget and States through IGR this is a priority to so that the scale of financing will be achieved that’s what Nigeria needs moving forward”.
“For this to be physically affordable some choices has to be made, for this to be affordable the federal, and State should contribute to rural roads.
Arguing on the need for subsidies on PMS, Chaudhuri said, “One of the biggest choices Nigeria need to make Nigeria is weather Nigeria can continue to put #5 trillion to its PMS subsidies every year , #6 trillion probably next year think about what could be done with #6trillion both at the federal, state and local government level”.
Country Director, AFD, Xavier Muron on his part stated that RAAM project of £200 million will address access road and electrification issues, help post harvest management through refrigeration and processing.
Muron added that the project would mitigate post harvest loss which is an issue in rural communities making Nigeria to import more food products to support food security issues and that’s why we have to see the implementation of the RAAMP project to ensure that we have a means to address post harvest losses and ensure food security.
