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Bennett Oghifo

The reconstruction of the first section of the Lagos Lagos-Badagry expressway will be completed for commissioning by April, this year.
The Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi stated this on Thursday during his inspection of this vital road that leads to other ECOWAS countries.

The minister also inspected the Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta road, as part of his four-day inspection of road projects in Lagos.
The federal government awarded the contract for the reconstruction of the Lagos -Badagry-Seme–Abidjan, contract, which is being done in two sections, in October 2018, the minister said.
The first section, which is 24.3 kilometres, has a contract sum of N71 billion, the minister said, adding that the contractor has been paid N50 billion.

The entire route to Seme border ought to be 56 kilometres, he said, “This route is supposed to be 56 kilometers up to Seme-Border.”
According to the minister, “The ECOWAS route on our side is said to be within 90 kilometers. But if we look at the configuration of the route, the first 10 kilometers was constructed by FERMA. We’ve seen that part of it has failed. Some of the sections should rather be reconstructed with concrete instead of asphalt. And we saw that the size of drain is small. So we cannot just do 1.6 kilometer review of the drain.

We rather seal the drain. And then when we want to reconstruct this 10 kilometer section, we can now increase the size of the drain.
“But we commend FEMA very highly. They did that about two years back. We will call them to look at the road again if they have funds.
Otherwise, we have to look for funds to do the same. Then the second one is 46 kilometers. That is this contract and the sections one and two.”
He said, “First section is 24.3 kilometers. And it’s at the Badagry roundabout there. So what we met on ground was two lanes in each carriageway. It’s being expanded to six lanes each carriageway. We can see that the contractor has done over 80 per cent of the work.
“The project has been reviewed. Let’s not forget that the entire project, phases one and two, were awarded in October 2018 at a contract sum of N63 billion. And then what we have done is to concentrate on section one, 24.3 kilometers.

“And so we’ve isolated section one and we’ve reviewed it. And we’ve reviewed section one alone to N71 billion. And if you add N71 billion and then the section two, on current prices, the total cost would be N145 billion.

“But within the availability of funds, we are doing section one first. And so the contractor has been paid about N50 billion. And so it means that what is left to complete this job is N21 billion.

“Let us see how we can complete this remaining four or five kilometers of the road before April 20, so that we can commission it as part of the programme of Mr. President.”

He said the second section of the expressway to Seme border would be paved with concrete.

At the Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta road, the minister said, “The total kilometer is 78kilometers. It was awarded to Julius Berger about eight years ago.
He said the federal government has completed one carriage way, about 78 kilometers.”

He said, “The Ogun State Government has taken off the section that is within Ogun State, and that’s about 60 kilometers. So we are left with 18 kilometers.