REPORTS - FG to reintroduce toll gates on federal roads

The Federal Government has announced that plans are at an advanced stage to return toll gate on federal highways.

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola disclosed this while briefing State House Correspondents after the Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting presided over by President Buhari yesterday.

Fashola, flanked by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said there was no law that stopped the government from having toll gate on federal roads.

He said, “There is no reason why we can’t toll, there was a policy of the government to abolish tolls or as it were, dismantle toll plaza but there is no law that prohibits tolling in Nigeria today.

We expect to return toll plazas, We have concluded their designs of what they will look like, what materials they will be rebuilt with, what new considerations must go into them. What we are looking at now and trying to conclude is how the bank end runs.”

He said that the government was also considering to eliminate the payment of cash by introducing electronic mode of payment. The Minister further disclosed that government needed to acquire more lands to expand the width of the toll gates as it proposed to have a ten-lane.