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FG To Fine Overloaded Trucks On Federal Highway N10m– Fashola

Ololade Omosan-Agie

The Federal Government has said that trucks that ply on its roads with loads weighing more than 12 tonnes will be charged a fine of between N1m to N10m.

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola revealed the sanction during an inspection on the refurbished Digital Truck Weighbridge at Old Toll Gate along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

The minister said the abuse of road by offenders have led to the degradation of most of the roads built with tax payer’s money.

The News Agency of Nigeria quoted Fashola as saying, “No matter how beautiful, how well designed the highways are, they are built with a specification, once you don’t comply with those specifications you are abusing or misusing the assets.

“Now, those specifications are global. So, they are not Nigerian made, every country in the world has subscribed to them. And so, if we see things in other parts that we like how they look, it is because they are properly used.

“Nigeria is a signatory to the ECOWAS Axle Load Regulation signed by all ECOWAS countries, and one of the first things President Buhari did in the first term of his administration was to ratify that convention locally.

“So, those are the regulations that you see, that we have published on that wall just to further educate people, they have been gazetted showing the approved axles per truck and type of truck and what each truck can carry.’’

According to him, the reason for putting the law in place is to make it cheaper to comply and very expensive to break the law.

 He explained that weigh ridges are currently being fixed to regulate axle load which would help increase the lifespan of the highways.

He also disclosed that the weigh bridges would generate 50,000 direct jobs and 200,000 indirect employments.

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