The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has disclosed on Wednesday that the Federal Executive Council has approved the reintroduction of toll collection on some selected dual carriageways across the country.
Fashola made this disclosure while briefing the State House correspondents at the end of the weekly meeting of the FEC presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
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The decision to reintroduce toll collection was made almost two decades after the Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration dismantled all toll plazas across the country in 2003.
The minister who stated that diplomatic, military, para-military vehicles, tricycles, motorcycles are exempted from the scheme reiterated that his ministry presented a memo which the council approved to reintroduce tollgates on dual carriageways of the 35,000km federal roads.
These roads, he explained, amounted to only 14.3 per cent of the entire 35,000km stretch of federal roads that were dual carriageways and would be eligible for tolling with vehicles paying between N200 and N500 toll per trip, depending on their brand while diplomatic, military, para-military as well as tricycles and motorcycles would be exempted.
The minister added that dual carriageways represented only 5,050km out of the total 35,000km. He further analyzed that the total network of roads that will be eligible for tolling on the federal network will be 14.3 per cent. Therefore, 85.27 per cent will not be eligible for tolling.
Now that the FEC has approved the reintroduction of toll plazas on selected roads, the minister said that the modalities to determine how soon the tolling system would take off is being worked out.
He said, “The Ministry of Works and Housing presented a policy memorandum for the approval of federal roads, bridges, tolling policy, and also a regulation that will provide a legal framework for the tolling policy.
“So, we have taken another step. So let me be clear, tolls are not going to start tomorrow. So let us be clear about that.”
The minister stressed that the open tolling system to be introduced would not commence until the affected roads were motorable while operational agreements would have to be negotiated with relevant government agencies. He further disclosed that the toll collected would not only be used to maintain the roads but would also be used to construct new ones.
