The party lamented that such insensitive idea, in the midst of excruciating economic hardship and high costs of living occasioned by the incompetence and harsh policies of the Buhari administration, is completely ill-conceived and anti-people.
Browsing: Toll gates
Fashola said this on Sunday in Abuja when he appeared on the News Agency of Nigeria flagship programme, NAN Forum.
Toll gates were introduced decades back when the glamour of the then newly constructed Lagos-Ibadan Expressway impressed the citizenry and we all appreciated the need to keep such beautiful edifice going through regular maintenance. The Sagamu-Ore-Benin Expressway was also considered worthy of similar maintenance. But years along the line it was discovered that the huge monies pouring into the covers of all the agencies and contractors administering the tolls were emptying into kleptomaniac drain pipes.
Nigeria’s broke and broken masses have dragged themselves through over 30 years of harsh, exploitative and oppressive governance with the nation’s commonwealth freely looted and scrounge infrastructure built with billions of dollars in oil earnings. The Military Junta and the party they established, the PDP, crippled the soul of the nation for these long and hard years, driving the masses to vote for the party of “change” for a breath of fresh air, but as a welcome gift to Nigerians who expected from the new government, a bit of respite and for once, opportunity for the masses and moderate restriction on the cabal, the Buhari government has announced road taxes via tolls as their reward
“This shows that tolling is necessary to support government funding. So, it will not be too much if we ask every road user to pay little to augment government funding for road maintenance
This, he said, included off-budget sources such as funding from multilateral agencies through concessional loans, public private partnership scheme and raising road bonds through the debt management office for the development of economic roads