The federal government has given reasons for the apparent delay in the completion of on-going repair work on the Apapa-bound section of the Marine Beach Bridge in Lagos, insisting that work on the bridge is progressing according to schedule.
The government pleaded that motorists should be patient with Buildwell Construction Company, the contractor handling the repair of the bridge, saying that the repair work has 18 months timeline that is expected to end in April next year.
“What looks like delay is not delay in the real sense of it, considering the nature of work the contractor is doing there. It is purely technical and takes a lot of planning and careful execution. What we are fixing there are broken joints involving replacing old, worn out bearings and connecting joints,” Kayode Popoola, Federal Controller of Works, in Lagos explained to BusinessDay on Wednesday.
The controller explained further that why only two or three workers are seen on top of the bridge was because much of the repair work was being done under the bridge. “If you see them sitting down and not doing anything, it may be that they are waiting for spare parts, or for crane to help them to adjust beams from under the bridge; they are not idle as people think they are,” Popoola said.
Kayode Opeifa, the executive vice chairman of the Presidential Task Team (PTT), had blamed the delay in completing the repair work, which has worsened traffic situation in Apapa, on the multiple maintenance work being undertaken by the federal government.
Marine Beach Bridge is one of the three bridges in Lagos that the federal government is repairing. The other two are the Alaka section of Eko Bridge and the Third Mainland Bridge which has six whole months completion timeline.
Motorists on these routes are not finding it easy as these repair work has led to partial closure of the bridges, constricting motorists to less than 50 percent of the available spaces and worsening traffic situation in the affected areas, especially Apapa which is known as home of gridlock in Lagos.
Because of the repair work on the Marine Beach Bridge and the reconstruction of five out of the eight access roads to Apapa and Tin Can Island ports as well as high influx of trucks, going to Apapa is becoming, once again, a stressful experience as the trucks have taken over more than 60 percent of the Ijora-Apapa Bridge.
Besides the reconstruction of the port access roads, the manual call up system which was used to control movement of trucks in and out of the ports has collapsed and, according to a maritime worker, who did not want to be named, “the system is now up for grabs by the highest bidder.”
According to the maritime worker, the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) needs to up its game in terms of efficient ports operation, stressing that the ports authority should do well to put in place an electronic call up system that should discourage human inter-face and manipulation.
He pointed out that truck drivers no longer take instructions from the presidential task team but pay their way into the ports “which is why, in some cases, you find many trucks moving to the ports at the same time, creating traffic situation that is too much for the task team to control.”
