The Minister of Works, Hosing and Power, Babatunde Fashola (SAN), had disclosed that plans are in the works to re-introduce toll gates.
He made this disclosure on Thursday when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Federal Roads Maintenance Agency.
“Clearly, tolling is coming,” the minister told the lawmakers.
Fashola went on to add that the building of the toll gates, the collection of tolls would be monitored. This, in addition to making sure commuters are not billed until the road is motorable.
He said, “We are not going to ask road users to pay toll on a road that is not good. While the construction (of gates) is going on, we are working on the design. We want to standardise the design so that people when we ask people to come and bid for the construction, we can control what they are going to construct.
“They are going to construct the materials we have prescribed. We can also control the price so that nobody is bidding with disparage prices; there will be the floor and the ceiling. Your price will vary according to how many plazas you build and not because you claim to have used ‘foreign’ materials.
“The last part we are working on is the software that drives the management, audit, and payment of toll fares. We want to use the development that has taken place between when the old toll plazas were dismantled and now. There were no GSM and payment platforms as of that time as we have cellphones and cards now. We want to make it very easy for people to go to kiosks and buy toll cards and pay tolls.”
