Nigeria has a road problem that is no longer merely an infrastructure problem. It is an economic emergency. Across the country, federal and state roads that millions of Nigerians depend on every day have deteriorated into death traps, mud tracks and obstacle courses. Vehicles are destroyed. Travel times have multiplied. Farm produce rots before reaching markets. Businesses lose customers. Transport fares rise. Emergency services are delayed. And ordinary Nigerians pay the price for roads that governments have allowed to collapse.
Yet there is a strange contradiction at the heart of Nigeria's infrastructure policy: governments continue to announce and commission new roads while existing roads are allowed to decay beneath the wheels of the people who use them.
There is nothing inherently wrong with building new roads. Nigeria needs new infrastructure, especially where economic expansion, population growth and industrial development demand it. But there is something profoundly wrong with treating the construction of new roads as a greater political achievement than preserving the roads already connecting our communities, markets, farms, schools, hospitals and industrial centres.
A road does not become less important because a government did not build it. If a federal road was constructed twenty years ago and millions of Nigerians still depend on it today, its rehabilitation should be treated as a national economic priority. If a state road connects major communities and carries thousands of commuters and tonnes of agricultural produce every day, keeping it functional should be considered a core responsibility of government—not an optional intervention to be announced when elections approach.
Governments understand how to mobilise resources when they want to build something new. They acquire rights of way. They award contracts. They deploy engineers. They hold commissioning ceremonies. They produce photographs and press releases.
The same urgency must be applied to maintenance. Nigeria cannot continue operating an infrastructure policy that celebrates ribbon-cutting while neglecting lifecycle management.
Every major road should have a maintenance and rehabilitation plan from the day it is constructed. Governments should know which roads require routine maintenance, which require resurfacing, which require reconstruction and which have reached the end of their useful lives. Funding should be predictable, contracts should be performance-based, and contractors should remain accountable for the quality and durability of their work.
Most importantly, road rehabilitation must stop being treated as a lesser form of infrastructure development.
A rehabilitated road can be just as economically transformative as a new one.
For a farmer, the difference between a functioning road and a destroyed road may determine whether his produce reaches the market or becomes waste. For a manufacturer, it can determine whether raw materials arrive on schedule. For a trader, it can determine whether transportation costs consume the profit from an entire journey. For a patient, a bad road can mean the difference between reaching a hospital in time and arriving too late.
These losses rarely appear in government project budgets. They appear in the pockets of Nigerians. The Federal Government and state governments therefore need to change the way they think about roads.
Before announcing another grand new road project, they should ask a more fundamental question: What is the condition of the roads Nigerians are already using?
Every state should publish a comprehensive inventory of its roads, their condition, traffic importance and rehabilitation requirements. The Federal Government should do the same for federal highways. Roads carrying significant economic activity should be prioritised according to measurable criteria—not political visibility.
And governments must resist the temptation to pursue new projects simply because they are easier to showcase. Nigeria does not need more kilometres of asphalt for the sake of statistics. It needs a road network that works.
Build new roads where they are genuinely needed. But repair, rehabilitate and maintain the roads we already have with the same determination, political will and financial commitment.
The Nigerian economy cannot move efficiently when its arteries are collapsing. Government should stop measuring road development by how many new roads it can announce. It should also measure success by how many existing roads it refuses to allow to di
