MAINTENANCES OF URBAN ROADS INFRASTRUCTURE IN KOGI STATE, NIGERIA

Poor designed and maintenance of urban roads in Nigeria is great obstacles to the free movement of people, freights and information. Many urban commuters are made to waste valuable period of time in their intra city movement. It is on this prem ise that this study examines the urban road infrastructure and how they are maintained in Lokoja metropolis, a city located in the north central part of Nigeria. In the ancient city of Lokoja, three major roads were randomly selected from three tiers of governments in Nigeria to assess the maintenance of the urban transport routes in the city. A systematic random sampling technique was employed to select an average of fifteen buildings along the road segments on the principle of one in every 20 th building. In each of the residential building sampled, only one head of household is selected and interviewed on the quality of road networks, provision and their maintenance. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data. The finding reveals that many of the urban routes in the city do not either pedestrian walkways or roads media which compounded mobility crises in the city. Pedestrians, motorcyclists and motori sts and other road users compete on urban routes for their day to day transactions. Further analysis shows that more than 60% of urban routes in Lokoja have non drainage system. Those roads that have drainage facility have been filled up by sand from the erosion activity. Many urban routes have no traffic light. The erratic power supply has made it difficult for urban commuters to travel in the night. The study therefore concludes that further research needs to be conducted on the designing of the urban road networks in Nigeria so as to achieve sustainable transport development.