After
serious opposition from members, the controversial National Road Fund Bill has
been withdrawn from the Senate.
been withdrawn from the Senate.
In sourcing
for revenue for the proposed national road fund, the Senate committee on works,
led by Senator Kabiru Gaya, had last week, in a report, recommended a levy of
N5 chargeable per litre on any volume of petrol and diesel products imported
into Nigeria and on non-locally refined petroleum products.
It had also
proposed that toll fees not exceeding 10 per cent of any revenue be paid as
user charge per vehicle on any designated federal road. The payment will not be
applicable to roads under the Public Private Partnership arrangement.
The panel
had equally proposed that there should be an “inter-state mass transit user
charge of 0.5 per cent deductible from fares paid by passengers to commercial
mass transit operators on inter-state roads.’’
But when the
Bill was presented to the Senate for consideration yesterday, many Senators
condemned the proposed levy, urging the Senate to immediately throw away the
idea because of its harsh economic implications.
Deputy
Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, Senate Leader, Ahmad Lawan, Minority Leader,
Godswill Akpabio and Kabiru Marafa, led the offensive against the withdrawal of
the bill.
Attempting
to defend the bill earlier, Gaya condemned what he called negative report
against the bill.
Meanwhile,
the upper chamber has raised the alarm over the continuous operation of fuel
subsidy regime. It said contrary to claims by the Federal Government, the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is still operating subsidy
regime in the country.
Chairman,
Senate committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream), Senator Marafa, on the
floor of the Senate yesterday, said NNPC was still making secret payments.
Marafa
claimed that the situation has crippled the downstream sector of the petroleum
industry, where NNPC has become the sole importer of products.
The lawmaker
revealed that his committee was currently investigating the illegal payment of
subsidy by NNPC.
The Senate
yesterday passed a Bill scrapping the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA)
and replaced it with Federal Roads Authority (FRA).
The bill,
sponsored by Senator Kabiru Gaya (Kano-APC), was read for the third time at
plenary before it was passed through a unanimous vote by the senators.
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