October 31, 2017

A Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Dr Emmanuel Adeyemo, has urged the Federal Government to adopt the Public Private Partnership (PPP) strategy to fund infrastructure development in Nigeria.

Adeyemo attributed poor maintenance of the country’s roads to inadequate budgetary allocation beside corruption and political sentiments of leaders.

He said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Tuesday.

According to him, decisions on road projects have over the years been based on political sentiments.

He frowned at the present practice where insignificant fraction of the national budget was allocated to infrastructure development.

“We still have that problem in this country where the least portion of the budget is allocated to infrastructure.

“Even for them to implement that little allocation has been a reoccurring problem.

“I think government should endeavour to look into other ways of building and financing infrastructure,” he added.

The Fellow said the deplorable state of roads in the country had resulted to wastage, elongated travel time, frequent breakdown of vehicles and increasing number of accidents.

“You can imagine when people just construct roads on the basis of the fact that a party member is living on the street and not necessarily on the need of that community.

“If we continue to practise that and do things in piecemeal without holistic planning and implementation approach, we may not get to our desired destination on time,” he said.