Fashola disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The minister said that, though the government dismantled toll plazas in the past, there was no law abolishing tolls.
The toll gates were dismantled by Obasanjo administration with effect from January 1 2004.
Obasanjo said the N63 million which the toll gates generated daily was nothing to write home and that the gates constituted inconvenience to motorists and encouraged corruption.
Justifying the return of the gates, Fashola, who introduced toll gates in Lagos as governor said: “Let me just clarify this impression about toll gates; there is no reason why we cannot toll; there is no reason.
“There was a policy of government to abolish tolls; to dismantle toll plazas but there is no law that prohibits tolls in Nigeria today.
“We expect to return toll plazas; we have concluded their designs; of what they will look like; what material they will be built with; what new considerations must go into them.
“What we are looking at now and trying to conclude is how the back-end runs and that is important because we want to limit significantly if not totally eliminate cash at the plazas while ensuring that electronic devices that are being used do not impede rapid movement.
“We are also now faced with the need to acquire more land to establish the width of the toll plazas because I believe that we are looking at a 10-lane plaza so that there can be more outlets and then they merge; so we need to acquire more land.’’
He however, said that the expectation that collection of tolls would produce the replacement cost of the road was not accurate.
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