Niger Governor Suspends N400m Road Rehabilitation, Blames Reckless Truck Drivers  

By Laleye Dipo in Minna

Niger State Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello, has directed the immediate suspension of work on the rehabilitation of the Minna–Suleja road, hinging his action on the activities of heavy duty trucks.

Governor Sani Bello gave the directive on Wednesday after inspecting the damaged portions of the road that has made movement of goods and services between Minna, the state capital and Suleja, a satellite town of the federal capital territory, herculean.

In the last couple of days motorists had spent several hours on the road because of the high degree of its dilapidation, a development which made the governor to carry out an inspection visit to the damaged portion of the road.

Bello said the state could not continue to invest its hard-earned resources on the project only for some vehicles to damage it even when the job had not been completed.

He attributed the quick dilapidation of roads in the country to the refusal of the authorities to enforce the law that provides the weight of vehicles allowed on these roads saying that “the federal Ministry of Works should enforce weighing bridges law if the life spans of the roads are to be sustained”.