Abstract
The approaches to managing our road transportation infrastructure are not sustainable. A sustainable road transport infrastructure must meet the needs of present road users and give allowance to accommodate future developments. There is a gap between expected life span of roads in Nigeria and actual life span after putting the infrastructure into use. This paper examined the reasons government cannot repair roads in Nigeria, identify the challenges faced by the construction companies while on road construction projects and the effects of bad roads on national sustainable development. Ministry of Works and Transport, Ibadan and ad hoc staff of two major construction companies Reynolds Construction Company (RCC) and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) were purposively selected based on the number of roads they have constructed in South-western Nigeria. Principal Component Analysis was used to identify the various factors that are responsible for the inability of government to construct and repair roads. Descriptive analysis was used to explain the challenges of construction companies and also the effects of bad road on national development. The findings identified 20 factors that are responsible for the inability of government to construct and maintain roads which were reduced into eight components. Some challenges in road construction are erosion, inadequate skilled labour, capital for equipment, funding, user’s problem and machinery repairs. The effects of bad roads include: road crashes (27%), high vehicle maintenance cost (21%), capital flight (17%), passengers’ discomfort (14%), high transportation cost (11%) and drivers’ fatigue (10%). The study concluded that, there should be standardized procedure for road construction projects in the form of: penalty for failure to meet the required deadline, quality, usage and rehabilitation in order to achieve sustainable development.
Highlights
Roads are very important in tapping resources, connecting people, places and businesses together
This paper examined the reasons government cannot repair roads in Nigeria, identify the challenges faced by the construction companies while on road construction projects and the effects of bad roads on national sustainable development
The findings from the results have shown that there are factors that should be observed if the construction and maintenance of roads are to achieve sustainable development in south-western
Summary
Roads are very important in tapping resources, connecting people, places and businesses together. According to Filani (1999), Nigeria has the largest road network in West Africa with about 200,000km surfaced roads. It is only about 28,980km that were paved and 179,220km unpaved (Federal Ministry of Works Bulletin, 2012). Hamzat (2016) observed that, Petroleum Trust Fund was initiated for road construction and maintenance between 1996 and 1999. It was further noted that roads were not properly constructed and there were no maintenance management systems in place to for sustainable development in Nigeria. Local governments that used to be responsible for arterial routes and Trunk C roads’ had since failed to perform their responsibility perhaps as they are taking orders from State governments. There is an expected level of road transport development which has not been realized for sustainable social, political and economic development of south-western Nigeria. Danladi et al (2013) expressed that performance of Nigerian roads is yet to be satisfactory in spite of several efforts to make it so
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