The Federal Government (FG) and the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), on Tuesday discussed the way forward on how to develop Nigerian roads.
Blessing Lere-Adams, Director, (Information) Press and Public Relations Unit of the Ministry of Works, in a statement said, the Minister of Works, Sen. (Engr) David Nweze Umahi presided over the meeting while the President and Chairman of Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), Engr, Prof. Sadiq Zubair Abubakar led the engineering team to the meeting.
According to the statement, the deliberation was held at the Ministry of Works Headquarter in Mabushi, Abuja.
The Minister in his remarks said, “I want to involve COREN and the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) in our road construction, l have gone round three regions of Nigeria, I am very dissatisfied with the supervision of these construction works.
“It seems that it is only in the South West that there are very capable hands and hard working Directors and controllers, notwithstanding, will put the same template to use in all the regions.
“We would like you to join us as COREN , there is no concrete road constructed in Ebonyi that has not lasted Seven years, our recommendation is that most of our highways are going to be a continuous reinforced highways, this is the vision of the Ministry,” he added .
Umahi further said, “While growing up, in engineering we used to have consultants consultants would always know that if they compromised their certificate of practice will be withdrawn even at the ministry level. That is the kind of discipline we want to bring on our road infrastructure.
“There is no supervision in all our projects; like I said other than the South West. Henceforth every project is going to have one senior consultant, later we can begin to have other junior oneslike surveyors, geotechnical and material engineers and other road engineers.”
He also enjoined COREN to join him in the propagation for the reintroduction of Concrete pavement in Nigeria. The Minister noted that no road that was built in this country had lasted more than three to four years even in the Northern part of Nigeria.
According to him, the roads in the South East are collapsing even while still under construction. The design in the roads are mostly built below the flood plain and the rains comes and they are washed away; adding that he has counted nine locations that have collapsed.
The President of COREN in his reaction said, “Having listened to you carefully COREN and NSE will key into these new positions that you have mentioned, the lack of supervision you talked about will be addressed, and we believe that needs to change totally, we will be able to give our own contribution in that respect.”
He said, “COREN has been restructured , we now have , six Regional Offices , with Lagos as a special Region, and then the 36 state offices with desk offices with seven departments, these will play key roles in this supervision, and we have developed a protocol to engage our members. l believe we are going to play a positive role when we develop modalities on how this will be worked out.
“n the aspect of seven professionals per project we are going to look at that and also contribute, on the introduction of reinforced concrete, there is a ministerial committee with this ministry which have been working on the specification, l am the chairman of that committee with senior expert along with the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of FERMA and others in the next one month we will make the submission and interim report to you that should be the first point of engagement which will expand the horizon for us to this new agenda of concrete road pavement,” he said.
