Trucks Carrying Excess Load In Nigeria Will Pay N1m To N10m Fine – Babatunde Fashola

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has announced that trucks carrying cargoes exceeding 12 tonnes on federal roads across Nigeria, will henceforth pay between N1 million and N10 million fine.

Fashola made the announcement on Thursday while inspecting the refurbished Digital Truck Weigh Bridge at Old Toll Gate along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

According to him, the measure was geared towards the Highway Development Initiatives of the Federal Government to curb abuse of highways causing quick degeneration.

He said overloaded trucks usually constituted danger to themselves, the infrastructure and other road users and appealed to the media to join in sensitisation to end the ugly trend.

“No matter how beautiful, how well designed the highways are, they are built with a specification, once you don’t comply with those specifications you are abusing or misusing the assets.

“Now, those specifications are global. So, they are not Nigerian made, every country in the world has subscribed to them. And so, if we see things in other parts that we like how they look, it is because they are properly used.

“Nigeria is a signatory to the ECOWAS Axle Load Regulation signed by all ECOWAS countries, and one of the first things President Buhari did in the first term of his administration was to ratify that convention locally.

“So, those are the regulations that you see, that we have published on that wall just to further educate people, they have been gazetted showing the approved axles per truck and type of truck and what each truck can carry,” he said.

Fashola said the fines against erring articulated vehicles were from N1million to over N10 million to serve as deterrent, noting that he was empowered to make regulations, hence the new calibrated bills for contravention of axle loads.

The Minister added that “the reason we have also done this is we want to make it cheaper to comply and very expensive to break the law.”

KanyiDaily had reported how some angry mob sets two fully loaded Dangote Cement trucks ablaze after allegedly crushing six people to death along the Lagos – Abeokuta Expressway in Ogun State.