Buhari govt under fire over plans to reintroduce toll gates scrapped by Obasanjo.

Buhari govt under fire over plans to reintroduce toll gates scrapped by Obasanjo.

The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL, on Saturday berated the Federal Government over its proposed move to reintroduce toll gates to bridge funding gaps for road repairs.

Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, who made the disclosure while addressing State House correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday said there is no law against toll plazas.

He added that some of the logistics being worked out before the reintroduction include acquiring more lands that will provide up to 10-lane plazas.

However, CACOL’s Executive Chairman, Debo Adeniran condemned the proposed move.

In a statement signed and forwarded to DAILY POST, Adegboyega Otunuga, the Coordinator of CACOL’s Media and Publications, Adeniran said:

“We recollect what the then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime stated when he scrapped toll gates on our highways nationwide late in 2003 and implemented on 1st of January, 2004, to the effect that they (The toll-gates) had not only outlived their usefulness and constituted inconvenience to motorists, but also encouraged corruption.

That exercise of dismantling the toll-gates across the country, reportedly cost Federal Government over N2bn (Two Billion Naira) tax payers’ money. We, therefore, wonder how much of additional tax payers’ funds that ordinarily should be used in easing their current socioeconomic problems, especially their suffering of travelling by those roads that were in dilapidated state for long by giving them free fuel vouchers for their endurance, rather than further extorting them.