House passes bills to scrap FERMA, return toll charges – TheNigerialawyer

Nigerians may soon begin to pay for the maintenance of roads
across the country through fees, levies and charges on road usage,
vehicle type and fuel imported and refined, among others.

This was as the House of Representatives on Friday passed two
bills one of which seeks to scrap the Federal Roads Maintenance
Agency and replace it with a Federal Roads Authority.

The House also passed a bill to establish a National Roads Fund
to generate revenue for the maintenance of roads.

Passed for third reading was the ‘Bill for an Act to Establish
the National Roads Fund for the Purpose of Financing Routine and
Periodic Maintenance of National Roads’ sponsored by Messrs Toby
Okechukwu and Nicholas Ossai.

Also passed was the bill to repeal the Federal Roads Maintenance
Agency (Establishment) Act 2002, the Federal Highways Act 1971, and
the Control of Advertisement Federal Highways Act 1986 and enact
the Federal Roads Authority. It was sponsored by Okechukwu.

The bills had been introduced in the 8th National Assembly and
were reintroduced in the 9th Assembly.

Okechukwu listed the objectives of the NRF to include being a
“repository of revenues from road user-related charges and other
sources for financing, which shall be managed and administered for
routine and periodic maintenance works on roads in Nigeria.”

The NRF bill reads, “Nigeria has an existing law entrenched in
the FERMA Amendment Act 2007 which empowered FERMA to fund its
operation through the collection of five per cent users’ charge on
pump price of petrol, diesel and of which 40 per cent will accrue
to FERMA and 60 per cent to be utilised by the established state
roads maintenance agencies.”

“This has not been operational because the Act did not address
the complexities of collection which have been resolved in this
bill. The sources of funds in the bill are: fuel levy of five N1
chargeable per litre on any volume of petrol and diesel products
imported into Nigeria and on locally refined petroleum
products;

“Axle load control charges; toll fees – a percentage not
exceeding 10 per cent of any revenue paid as user charge per
vehicle on any road designated as a toll road that are not PPP
roads;

“International vehicle transit charges; inter-state mass transit
user charge of 0.5 per cent deductible from the fare paid by
passengers to commercial mass transit operators on inter-state
roads.

“Roads fund surcharge of 0.5 per cent chargeable on the assessed
value of any vehicle imported at any time into Nigeria; lease,
licence or other fees which shall be 10 per cent of the revenue
accruing from lease or licence or other fees pertaining to
non-vehicular road usages along any federal road and collected by
the federal roads agency; grants and loans; and gifts of land,
money or other property.”

According to the bill, a draft of which our correspondent
obtained after the passage, revenues to the NRF should be
supplemental to the budget, “coming from charges related to road
use and channelled directly to the Road Fund account.”