The Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) says plans are under way to fill up potholes and intervene in the repair of failed roads nationwide as the rainy season sets in.
The acting Managing Director of FERMA, Mr. Godson Amos, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) today in Abuja.
According to him, the intervention was necessitated because of the need to ameliorate the hardships and delays road users face daily.
He was optimistic that the intervention would be achieved within six weeks of its commencement and that all potholes and road failures would be worked on on federal roads across the country.
He said he had gotten reports across the country of the deplorable Federal Roads across the country, which had caused a lot of inconvenience to road users.
He added that these failures have hampered economic activities due to the people's inability to freely move goods from one place to another.
”The failures on the roads are mostly caused by the incessant rainfall being experienced in many parts of the country, which results in the cutting off of road embankments and the collapsing of many carriageway sections at many locations across the country.
Also, excessive traffic, overloaded vehicles, and the age of the roads are other factors that have contributed to the dilapidation of the federal roads.
“This hinders the free flow of traffic, causing colossal damages to vehicles, wastages of productive man hours, and huge discomfort to road users.
“Our engineers in the Field Offices have already carried out a route condition survey of the Federal Roads and have identified all critical failures like road embankments washout and failed carriageway sections for the agency to take action.”
Speaking on how the agency would execute this intervention, Amos said direct labour would be deployed by engaging skilled and unskilled youths in the communities.
He further said that appraisals have been made, including the assessment of work requirements and the estimation of resources like men, materials, and machines that will be deployed to achieve the most cost-effective result.
Amos said that in order to ensure that maximum results were achieved, the agency had designed a good monitoring mechanism for effective and efficient monitoring of all the projects nationwide by deploying a management team for inspection.
He urged the media to give effective coverage to the activities of the agency and other stakeholders to partner with the agency to ensure that citizens have a stress-free and enjoyable travel experience on our highways.
The chief executive of FERMA, however, said funding was a challenge in the maintenance of the 36,000 kilometres of federal highways all year round.
NAN reports that FERMA is an agency that was set up for the monitoring and maintenance of all federal roads in Nigeria.