As the lingering economic recession continues to take its toll on the economy with many households unsure of being part of Christmas celebrations, the Federal Government says there is hope of rebuilding and growing the economy out of recession using the nation’s highways.
In the understanding that part of the ways of creating activity and reflating the economy is by providing infrastructure and paying contractors, the Federal Government has embarked on major roads reconstruction and, according to Babatunde Fashola, minister for power, works and infrastructure, these activities would “improve ease and cost of doing business in the country, and also reduce the cost of food and every other thing we depend on.”
Fashola, who was on inspection tour of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway where massive reconstruction work is being done by Julius Berger, thanked all who had cooperated with the contractor including Ogun and Lagos governments, the FRSC team, the works controller in Lagos, minister of defence, the police, the commuters, etc.
He promised that as government continued to receive that cooperation, there would be improvement in both motoring experience and journey time month after month and year after year.
A few weeks ago, government restricted movement extensively on a section of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, especially on the long bridge, and this caused some discomfort on many commuters and the minister explained then that it was important to do that work so as to save the bridge which had not received any major maintenance since it was opened about 40 years ago.
“Our intentions for restricting movement on the bridge were in the best interest of the commuters who suffered the discomfort. It was to give them better motoring experience and to improve their journey time. We had a completion timeline of December 31 to finish this work, but our contractor has doubled its effort and has now finished the first phase of work on the long bridge,” he said.
Continuing, he said, “This is a 4,500-metre bridge on both sides. It has just been asphalted but it is not yet finished. The contractor still has to install some joints on the bridge – 44 of them on both sides. The contract extends up to Kilometre 46 to Sagamu and the contractor has said they are asphalting between kilometre 30-33. So, there is still a lot of work and road management to do here,” still appealing for patience and understanding from commuters.
The minister said the sacrifice so far made was well placed as commuters now have better motoring experience and shorter journey time even as work continues.
“The improved motoring experience on this road shows change is on the way. Change is always slow because it is a process. But, in our style of governance, we know we are in a result-driven business,” he assured.
To get the long bridge to the level where it is at the moment, the contractor had to do a lot of work, and according to Fashola, the contractor had to move 35,000 tons of scarified materials, which were the materials they excavated from the bridge and replaced that with same amount of materials.
“They did this using trucks and trailers and so, from their asphalt mixing plant, they used 25 trailers to deliver materials to this site. They also had 25 trailers delivering aggregates and bitumen on daily basis, making it 50 trailers on the road every day. While the work was going on, there were 1000 trips of asphalt, 1000 trips of aggregates and 60 trips of bitumen and 2000 trips of scarified materials, and during this period, it was raining which made the work all the more difficult”, the minister noted.
CHUKA UROKO
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