Save for the activities of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the Second Niger Bridge, one of President Muhammadu Buhari’s major legacies in the South east, would have been completed by now, the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said on Wednesday.
Fashola, a former governor of Lagos State, explained that the sit-at-home order maintained in the area every Monday, for two years by the group, took away a princely 52 days from the project, resulting in the delay in its completion.
A guest on the breakfast programme on Channels Television, Sunrise Daily, Fashola told his hosts: “These dates keep shifting and people must remember that on the eastern side, our contractors have not been able to work on Mondays for almost two years and that has affected the completion date. While construction workers worked on Saturdays, a 52-day loss cannot easily be made up for in construction work.”
He cited certain other challenges like relocating transmission lines connecting the East to the West across the Niger River, as also contributory to days lost adding that the snag affected the early completion of the bridge within the time earlier stipulated.
The minister, who set a new date of completion of the project for the second quarter of 2023, explained that what remained was the last four kilometres stretch expected to be done in the in four months, adding that the construction was taking place in a marshland and as such, the terrain needed dredging and sand filling, a process which he stated could not be rushed.
But the Minister also explained that the new date was even possible because the ministry and its contractors made great progress on the road so far, by employing the use of Prefabricated Vertical Drains which accelerate settlement of the sandfilled land and the drainage that was constructed, which enabled workers to start building quicker than would ordinarily have been expected.
Fashola, who said the result of all the efforts was that the Federal government is now targeting April/May 2023 as new date to deliver a perfectly completed job, added that it is inevitable that the bridge would be tolled to ensure that it is well maintained in order to serve Nigerians for many years.