*Executive, Legislature must work together, Saraki insists

By Henry Umoru

ABUJA—THE Federal Government yesterday picked holes in planned move by the Senate to scrap the Federal Road Maintenance Agency, FERMA and replace it with the Federal Roads Authority, FRA.

President Buhari

The government, which cautioned the Senate over the move, however, warned  that FERMA was already a brand on its own which should not be changed.

The position of the Federal Government was unveiled yesterday when the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, appeared before the Senator Kabiru Gaya- led  Senate Committee on Works at a one day Public hearing on the Repeal of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency Act and the Reenactment of the Federal Roads Authority.

Fashola said: “We welcome the idea of creating roads fund, we also welcome the idea of creating a maintenance agency but we think and this will be details of the substance of the presentation that I will make.

“We think that all of the recommendations that have been made for maintenance should be embodied in the agency that government has already created FERMA.
“Repeal the existing FERMA law, re-enact it and put all of the new things we want to create inside it instead of creating a new agency because FERMA was set up for maintenance in the very first place.

“It has acquired the name, it has acquired the brand, we can build on that brand instead of creating new brand. People who managed brands like this change their drinks but they don’t change their names.”

On the move by the Senate to reintroduce toll gates on the nation’s highways, as a way of raising funds for the maintenance of the roads, the Minister agreed with the move.

Meanwhile, Senate President Bukola Saraki while responding to the Works Minister, stressed the need for collaboration between the executive and legislative arms of government.

He also said the collaboration had become imperative in the overall interest of Nigeria and Nigerians, if the needed growth and development must be achieved.

Earlier in his remarks, while declaring open the public hearing, Senate President, Bukola Saraki, who noted that the management of federal roads across the country had relied on a weak governance structure, said: “Nigeria has a total road network of nearly two hundred thousand kilometres, out of which 16 per cent are federal roads.”