Federal Government says it will, in the next three years, spend N270 billion on the maintenance and repair of bridges across the country, stressing that it is committed to rehabilitating more federal bridges within this period.
Babatunde Fashola, minister for power, works and housing, who disclosed this yesterday during an inspection of work on the damaged portion of the 3rd Mainland Bridge in Lagos, noted that many of the bridges built in the country in the last four decades had not been given any form of maintenance.
“The attitude has been to wait until it gets bad or worse, then we come and repair. We intend to change that attitude”, the minister assured, disclosing that his ministry would carry out more emergency repair and maintenance work in most of the bridges in the country.
“We have a three-year plan to rehabilitate, repair and carry out maintenance of over 50 bridges across the country that will cost about N270 billion and this will commence as soon as the 2017 budget is passed,” he said, adding that close to N100 billion would be spent in the first phase of the project.
He said about N70 billion to N100 billion would be spent in year one, starting with the very critical ones to avoid collapse and thereafter they would move to the less critical and not-too-endangered ones.
Fashola assured motorist that the maintenance work would be completed by November, saying, “we have come to inspect this contract that was awarded a couple of years back when there was an indication of some misalignment on the 3rd mainland bridge.”
He explained that the crack on the bridge was due to some ecological problems such as erosion and sand filling. “Contracts were awarded to correct it, but the contractor said the job had not been completed because they were not paid. They got money in 2016 when this administration resumed work and planned to finish the maintenance work in November 2017”, he said.
The minister also promised to stop illicit activities on bridges in order to free traffic.
