Motorists and other road users, especially those that are frequently on Eko Bridge, have cried out to both federal and Lagos State governments to end their suffering arising from long hours in terrible traffic on that bridge.
Since March 23, 2022, when the bridge was partially closed to traffic following the fire incident on Akpangbon bridge, the driving experience on Eko Bridge which is a major route to Lagos Island from the Mainland, has been anything but pleasurable.
While motorists groan over increased travel time and waste of quality man-hour on the bridge, those who commute to the island through public transport lament increased travel time and cost.
A Lagos resident who lives on the island but has his business on the mainland shared his daily harrowing experience with BusinessDay. “Ordinarily, it takes me less than 30 minutes to get to my office from my house on the island. Now it takes me about three times that time because, to get back to my house after the day’s job, I have to go through Third Mainland Bridge which also has its own traffic challenge.
“It is as bad as that and you needed to go through Eko Bridge to understand what Lagosians go through on daily basis on that stretch of road just to go to work or get back to their houses,” said the business owner, who did not want his name mentioned.
He called on the authorities concerned, whether it is the federal government or Lagos state or both, to hasten the palliative work on the burnt Akpangbon Bridge to enable the reopening of the closed bridge and end people’s suffering.
On his part, Raymond Okon, a banker who works on Victoria Island but lives in Festac Town, lamented how his transport fare has more than doubled from N600 on a motorbike (okada) from Mile 2 to N1,200 to the Island.
“That’s beside the fare from my house which is N200,” said the banker who shared an ‘okada’ ride with this reporter from Mile 2 to CMS on Wednesday this week.
He wondered why it was taking so long for the repair work to be completed, calling on the Lagos State government to intervene because, according to him, the state owed its residents the moral duty of making life less stressful, especially in areas where it has capacity.
“The people who are using this bridge are Lagosians, not people from Kano or Rivers state. They are Lagos residents, many of whom are paying their taxes responsibly to the state government. So, for me, waiting for the federal government to fix the problem amounts to punishing Lagosians,” he said.
Read also: Akpongbon, Eko Bridges to be rehabilitated in phases
When Babatunde Fashola, minister of works and housing, came a couple of weeks ago to inspect the burnt bridge along with other bridges in Lagos, he assured that government would soon complete repair work that had already started. But no timeline was given by the minister.
Olukayode Popoola, the federal controller of works in Lagos, had assured of speedy completion of the repair work on the bridge without giving any completion date even though he said it was an emergency.
In a telephone interview with BusinessDay, the controller said,”do not go out there and tell them that I gave you a date when the bridge would be reopened because here we are talking about engineering work in which we follow procedures.”
When this reporter visited the site of the burnt bridge, one of the workers on-site who volunteered to talk, simply repeated what the contractor said when the minister came, saying that “the repair work will be done in phases, beginning from the worst areas.”
The worker, who declined to mention his name, added that how soon or otherwise the repair work would be completed depended on funding from the federal government.
Popoola was not available to comment on the current status of the repair work as his phone rang full circle when this reporter called Thursday afternoon but he did not pick up.
