The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said on Tuesday the Federal Government would ensure transparency in the Highway Development Management Initiative (HDMI) for all participants.

Fashola, who disclosed this at the Ministerial Notice of the commencement of the HDMI in Abuja, said the initiative would be used to manage and develop federal road networks in the country.

He said the goal of the initiative is to attract sustainable investment and funding in the development of road infrastructure in the country.

Fashola said: “The rationale behind the private sector engagement under the HDMI would provide an avenue that would mitigate the paucity of funds, which had hindered roads development in the past.”

According to him, the initiative falls in line with the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan of the country which has been in implementation for almost four years.

The minister said the federal government was executing over 700 different programmes in the country.

This aggregates to 13,000km of roads and bridges on rehabilitation and construction among the 36 states, including the FCT.

“As a result of the size of project we are taking, there is an increasing demand for funding to finance the project.

“There is the need to finance other complementary services, rest houses, towing vehicles, which seems suited for commercial initiating compliance.

“This is another effort to mobilize carrying capacity, resources, and entrepreneurship into the Nigerian highway sector and hopefully convert the roads from the social assets into assets of commercial opportunities.

The 12 routes aggregate the total of 1963.24km which represents 5.6 percent of the 35,000km of the federal road network,” he added.