Roads and Refunds

President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has brought some sanity to the vexed issue of Roads & Refunds, whereby states may work on federal projects and be reimbursed according to agreed templates. Before now, even by the president's admission, the matter was politicized. Some states got refunds, some rebuffs.

Though we shall not be detained here by the unwholesome politics of our queer federalism, it is salutary to see a president come to its rescue in this regard. If the question of roads is a national malady, devolution to states and the private sector is the most promising interim remedy, while the final solution is the practice of TRUE federalism.

If Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola of Lagos State had left it up to the federal bureaucrats, would we have the 10-lane wonder of the Lagos-Badagry Multi-modal Expressway being built right now? In fact, the vote-worry PDP tried every trick in their bag to frustrate, if not terminate, the world class project! My family lived on that road when Mobolaji Johnson was building it in the early 1970's. Though it has since become a crucial part of the Trans-African Highway, it has suffered the most despicable neglect from the federals - in league with its ilk across the land: Lagos-Ibadan, Lagos-Benin, Onitsha Bridge
and Lokoja-Abuja, to name a few. But for Yar'Adua's personable presidential propriety, the storm troopers were threatening hellfire, invoking federal powers and flaunting central controls - a throwback to the same debilitating desperation which killed the futuristic "metro train" project of the Jakande Administration.

Looking back now, we must wonder how the dramatis personae in both sagas feel today. See the avoidable costs and chaos they caused Lagos and Nigeria! In the recent past, the cabal saw Lagos and Kano States as prized targets for PDP's political "conquest & capture" come 2011. They forgot history: Lagos, Kano and The Old Bendel (now Edo/Delta) live and prosper as progressives. So is most of the Northeast, and all of the Southwest. Clearly, to eye any state for fair electoral victory is a
legitimate political aspiration. But to sabotage Nigeria's main commercial and population centres thus undermining national security, is political hara-kiri. It was why Governors Tinubu and Shekarau made mincemeat of OBJ and PDP despite his imperial presidency!

But be not carried away. If you thought the roads & bridges matter is mainly an inter-party saga, you are dead wrong! Few examples will do: Abuja-Lokoja, Abuja-Kaduna, and Abuja-Keffi-Lafia-Makurdi to the East, Abuja-Jos, and all PDP-controlled! The rot is simply "inter-tier" of governance (federal vs states), period. We must rework our pathetic practice of federalism by reducing BOTH the load and resources at the centre. Let's evolve a credible scheme that breeds patriotism, nationalism, real accountability and unblemished integrity. The federal "centre" is overloaded, over-resourced and over-rated! Politically, it is too attractive for all the wrong reasons, and it is failing us all - expectedly.

Set up a powerful, efficient and effective "Roads & Bridges" Commission, just like NCC, NBC, NAFDAC, and let states, communities and the private sector build for their people and the nation. Do same with education, health, agriculture, water and housing. If we need a mega or special project as national intervention, it should be handled by the National Economic Council cum National Council of State cum National Assembly with the usual concurrence of State Assemblies, and funded
from the Federation Account.

FERMA, the present roads' maintenance agency, should be split and inaugurated into SIX Zonal Construction Companies. We should get them six world class technical partners from different countries with up to 30% equity. We should equip them and staff them with redeployments from the works and housing MDAs so they can compete for business in their zones (in the first 5 years), nationwide (5-10 years) and Africa-wide (after 10 years). They will be owned by a Zonal Trust as joint ventures
FG/States/Workers/Tech Partners, and will be full service construction firms. In the fullness of time, just like the NNPC and NRC, they will be privatized.

This architecture will enable us leave urban works to first-rate contractors while deploying/dedicating the various State Direct Labour Agencies (DLAs) to rural infrastructure/housing.

Thank goodness, President Jonathan has shown the way. Now, he must show the will: The next stage of the constitution amendment must redress this aberration. Who is afraid of true federalism?