The Executive team of the Nigerian Institution of Highway Engineers has applauded the management of AG Dangote for the use of cement to construct 23 kilometers road from Itori to Ibeshe in Ogun State, offering to partner with the company to better enhance its operations.
Commenting on the use of Concrete road for the country, the chairman of the institution who led the delegation for the industrial visits, Isa Usman Emoabino, said: “Definitely, this will not be a new thing for Nigeria. AG Dangote is veering out into another area that is not very common in Nigeria and if they work together with professionals like us, we will make sure that we are able to get the best out of that.
“That is our main reason for coming here today, we tagged our visit here today to be industrial visits, and all through the things we have seen, we try to give free consultancy, in order to ensure that whatever we have seen can be made better.”
The Chief Executive of AG-Dangote, Ashif Juma thanked the professional engineers for coming and importantly for offering to partner with the company, stating that the 23 kilometers concrete road is a corporate social responsibility efforts of the company, to show that concrete roads are better in all ramifications than the asphalt roads.
“The project is for the benefits of the community. It is obvious that the option for concrete roads will be the solution to solve the road infrastructural decay in the country. This is because concrete road is less expensive than asphalt road by almost 23 percent and also we can build concrete road in less time.
“Even in terms of maintenance, we don’t need so much resources to maintain it like the asphalt roads. In countries like Brazil, Portugal and India, where they use concrete roads majorly, they don’t have the type of road challenges we have in Nigeria because concrete roads can lasts for a minimum of 40 years as against asphalt roads that can lasts for between seven to eight years…So, the good option for the Nigerian government will have to be for them to embrace the use of concrete roads.”
It would be recalled that the Chairman of Dangote Cement, Aliko Dangote recently reiterated his plea to the Federal Government to urgently consider the use of concrete roads in the country.
Aside from being very cheap, he said concrete roads are more durable and that its maintenance cost is near zero.
“We are pushing for Nigeria to do a concrete road. It is cheaper to do a concrete road that will last over 40 years than to do a bitumen road. It will also help in eliminating corruption because if you go and build a bitumen road, it will have to be adequately maintained unlike a concrete road that is very durable,” Dangote said.
Executive Director in the Dangote Group, Mansur Ahmed during the 21st Summit of the NESG in Transcorp Hilton also urged the three tiers of Government to embrace the use of concrete roads in Nigeria.
He said concrete roads makes more economic sense for a country like Nigeria, as the use of Asphalt has left the roads in deplorable conditions.
While noting that asphalt road is no longer in vogue in developed climes, he said the construction of concrete road is faster and can last for half a century compare to Asphalt.
According to him, in the construction of concrete roads, the cement raw materials are readily available while Asphalt is imported into the country.
