The Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, said on Tuesday that the state government in collaboration with the 16 local governments in the state, invested N2.8bn in rural roads in 2012.

He spoke during the state government’s monthly public enlightenment programmes tagged, ‘The governor explains’.

Ahmed said the state government spent N2bn while the 16 LGs spent N800,000m.

He added that collaboration between state and local government in road construction and other infrastructure provision was more beneficial to the local governmentbecause that they had yet to have strong financial muscle.

Ahmed also said the government was investing in road construction, rehabilitation and transportation modernisation because of the importance of good road network and functional transport system to the socio-economic, industrial and agricultural development of the state and the people’s wellbeing.

He added that improving on transportation should largely be private sector driven.

The governor said, "Government will continue to encourage transporters to ply roads where there is huge demand. The system should run on private sector driven. If there is too much government involvement, it becomes regulated and the process will not give the best of service.

"We are working on roads. There are certain roads that we want to modernise to make accessibility to our people. We are going to expand the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital Road to make it easy for commuters to go thro and fro.

"We intend to look at the possibility of cutting off from the Airport Road to link the Asa Dam Street so that we will reduce traffic congestion," he added.

Ahmed said it was needful to have good maintenance culture to reduce waste of public funds and ensure sustainability of public utilities and infrastructure.

"We should not be celebrating infrastructure in Nigeria today. Because of lack of maintenance structure, we are still pursuing infrastructure, especially old ones. The same old infrastructure is being rehabilitated because we have poor maintenance culture," he said.

The governor said though it is the Federal Government’s responsibility to repair Offa-Erin-Ile-Ajase Road, and Omu Aran-Ajase Road, the state government would play its complementary role in making the roads functional.

According to him, the Federal Government had mobilised to begin the rehabilitation of the roads. He, however, said that the state government would continue to put pressure on the Federal Government to ensure that all deplorable federal roads in the state were rehabilitated or reconstructed.

He said the state government had good programmes for the development of the transport sub-sector in the state.

He, however, said that huge funds were needed to execute the capital projects.

The governor said, "All these are part of the programme that we intend to carry on. The new and current projects will see full shape hopefully before the end of the year.

"But do not forget that we have to source for funding; it is one thing to plan, one thing to access funds and another thing to kick-start the implementation of projects.

"Before the year runs out, we will begin to see how to access funds on large scale terms. Our funds are recurrently flowing, so we must access large chunks of funds and use our inflowing funds to pay back. This large chunk of funds will enable us to carry out these capital projects."