The House of Representatives has proposed the federal government’s allocation of 20% of the Ministry of Works budget to the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) in the 2025 appropriation to enable the agency to discharge its responsibilities of maintaining the country’s federal roads.
The call followed the adoption of a motion moved by Rep. Aderemi Oseni at plenary on Tuesday.
Presenting the motion, Oseni said FERMA as an agency was saddled by law as its mandate to maintain and rehabilitate all federal roads across the country and has been doing its best with the paltry budgetary allocation it receives annually.
He noted that FERMA’s annual budgetary allocations cannot make the desired impact because of the large number of roads that were in need of urgent repairs and rehabilitation across the country.
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The lawmaker said the inadequate funding of FERMA translated to a lack of proper maintenance of the roads which he said require an average of N300 billion to N500 billion annually for their maintenance.
Rep. Oseni added, “Sadly, the annual budget of FERMA is a meager sum of about 25 billion naira to 50 billion naira within the last two years, which is about 10% of the required amount.
“The Federal Ministry of Works in the 2024 budget has about one trillion naira, thus the need to allocate 20% of the Ministry of Works budget to FERMA in the 2025 budget estimates, to enable FERMA to fulfill the proposed establishment and maintenance of roads.”
The house adopted the motion and urged the federal ministries of Budget and Economic Planning, Finance and Budget Office of the Federation to allocate 20% of the Ministry of Works 2025 budget to FERMA.
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