The federal government is set to reintroduce toll plazas on select dual carriage roads in the country.
This followed the approval by the federal executive council for the reintroduction.
This is as it exempted diplomatic, military, para-military vehicles, tricycles, motorcycles from the scheme.
Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, disclosed these on Wednesday while briefing the State House correspondents at the end of the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Recall former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration dismantled all toll plazas on federal roads across the country in 2003.
Fashola said 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 said, “So the total network of roads today, assuming we wanted to start today, which we’re not, that will be eligible for tolling on the federal network will be 14.3 per cent of the total network. So, 85.27 per cent will not be eligible for tolling.
“We have seen that most of those dual carriageways also have alternative roads, but they are single carriageways; that’s why we left them. So, the only exception to single carriageway are some bridges and they are listed in the regulation.”
