Daily Trust - the online edition

The Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), with a con-sortium of road maintenance engineering experts, ToruEbi Konsult of Ontario, Canada, has concluded a 3-day training programme for FERMA Chief Maintenance Engineers in their effort to find a lasting solution to road maintenance in the country.

The training programme held at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, under the theme: "Nigeria – Canada Initiative for Better Roads", with participants drawn from FERMA engineer corps across all states of the Federation. It was the second of FERMA’s effort at domesticating training programmes of that nature which were hitherto held offshore.

At the opening ceremony, FERMA’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Engr. Olubunmi Peters, stated that in its bid to position the Agency’s engineers to acquire cutting edge technologies for managing road maintenance in line with current global best practices, FERMA has realised that many more staff could be trained in the country cheaper by bringing in experts from abroad rather than sending only a few staff abroad for the same training.

Engr. Philip Amusa-Bello, Executive Director, Road Maintenance Management Services, who represented the MD/CEO, urged the chief maintenance engineers to address their minds diligently to tap as much technical skills from the Canadian resource persons as possible within the training period, arguing that they stand to benefit from such new skills in their field assignments. He said this was imperative especially now that government has demonstrated a lot of commitment through improved budgetary provisions to maintenance in its road management.

Peters stated that in line with its mandate to offer professional assistance to State’s road maintenance agencies, the Agency might be extending such training opportunities to State roads maintenance agencies in the future. This, according to him, is to provide Nigerians a seamless road transport infrastructure across the entire national road network. He reasoned that such assistance might be necessary as many of the state agencies are yet to be set up or in their infancy at best.

Among the resource persons from Canada are Professor Susan Tighe, a registered engineer with work experience at the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and a contracting firm in Australia who holds a research chair at the University of Waterloo.

She is also currently heading the largest pavement research programme in Canada and Michael Esenwa, a licensed professional engineer who had earlier worked with Messrs Ove Arup in Nigeria before relocating to Canada.