Road Tolling: Nigeria to adopt South African model

As part of the efforts to ensure the successful implementation of the road management policy, the Federal Government is to adopt the South African model of tolled road management.

The Managing Director, Infrastructure Bank, Mr. Adekunle Oyinloye, stated this in Abuja at the opening ceremony of a training programme on tolled roads and road management.

Oyinloye said the bank was collaborating with the Development Bank of South Africa in organising a two-day training for stakeholders in the road sector.

According to him, South Africa has been engaged in the road management for the past 20 years and it is good for Nigeria to learn from its experience.

Oyinloye said the workshop, tagged, ‘Tolled roads and  road management:  A sustainable approach’, was aimed at bringing the stakeholders in the sector together for a common goal.

He said this would enable them have a clear and common understanding of issues and the dynamics surrounding financing, construction, operation and maintenance in the road sector.

“In Nigeria, we are trying to establish a Federal Roads Authority that will be in charge of tolled roads and we want to learn from how they do their things in South Africa; what they have done right and how they did it,” he said.

He said the DBSA had been involved in the funding of roads and that TIB was working closely with it to look at the model and the financing structure the South African bank had used over the years.

Oyinloye said the essence of this was to replicate the model and adopt it to suit the local environment.

He said that the Federal Government had made significant progress in infrastructure development, which had been facilitated by the emergence of public-private partnerships.

He added that the private sector had the wherewithal to garner financial resources of the right temperament to fund the development of the road sector, which has been globally accepted as the bedrock of sustained socio-economic growth.

“The missing link is inadequate knowledge and capacity, largely on the part of public institutions, to understand the dynamics inherent in construction, management and maintenance of this sector,” Oyinloye said.

Source: The Punch Newspaper