Nigeria: 'Gombe - Our Roads Are to Stimulate Economic Growth'

19 November 2012

AllAfrica.com - interview

Gombe — Engineer Hadi Shehu Usman is the Gombe State Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure and is currently handling the multi billion Naira road projects across Gombe state. In this interview. He is full of hopes that their administration will turn Gombe into an economic hub with roads to link the entire state to stimulate growth.

What informed the decision of the Gombe state government to commit huge resources in the roads infrastructure?

All over the world roads are very critical to development. I will tell you why roads are significant and important to Gombe state. I want to take road as an infrastructure globally. I was at a conference organised by the senate committee on works, and the Minister for Works was in attendance to present a paper. Incidentally, some of the revelations we received from the paper presented by the Minister addressed the issue of historical background of road development and road infrastructure and of it we were told that the greater economies, the big nations of the world are talking about millions of kilometres of road networks in their environments. The paper dwelt on some African nations with hundreds of thousands of kilometres of roads but in Nigeria we are still battling with just about 33,000 kilometres of roads nationwide.

Read the complete interview...

Category: Transport