Uncertainty trails completion date of Lagos-Ibadan expressway

•Commuters, motorists to face more agonising time

AGAIN, the planned commissioning of Lagos-Ibadan expressway scheduled for today has failed for the third time.

The implication of this, is that commuters, motorists and other road users who ply the dual carriageway will have to agonise longer as they go through excruciating pains caused by endless gridlock on the road on daily basis.

It would be recalled that the immediate past Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, had reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to delivering infrastructural projects to Nigerians, saying the Lagos-Ibadan expressway project would be delivered before December 25, 2022.

Fashola stated this during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, where he commended President Muhammadu Buhari’s efforts in delivering the dividends of democracy to Nigerians.

Asked when the project would be completed, the former minister had said at the time: “The Federal Government plans to deliver the project before Christmas of 2022.''

Leading a federal government delegation to Lagos-Ibadan expressway to assess and determine what could be done to reduce the impact of gridlock on motorists and commuters in Lagos and Ogun states sometime in 2022, Fashola assured journalists that the Lagos–Ibadan expressway would be completed by end of April 2023.

Again, on May 23, 2023, the former minister said the incoming administration of Senator Bola Tinubu would commission the expressway on June 30, 2023.

He disclosed this during an extraordinary Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting presided over by former President Muhammadu Buhari at the chamber in the State House, Abuja.

He had said  “There is a critical section in the four-kilometre last mile to Lagos. It is technical but what has delayed it is that we found black cutting soil under the pavement.”

The 127-kilometre Lagos-Ibadan expressway is Nigeria’s oldest road, commissioned in 1978 by the military government of Olusegun Obasanjo.

The contract for its reconstruction was awarded in 2013 by the Goodluck Jonathan administration at N315 billion.

So far, the Federal Government has approved about N240 billion for the reconstruction of the expressway, of a total of N315 billion which is the project’s contract value.

The highway, on which work has stalled over time, connects Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states, and leads to various regions of the country.

The government had initially made a concession agreement with Wale Babalakin’s Bi-Courtney to rebuild and manage the road for 25 years, but after the company failed to make any progress, on November 19, 2012, terminated the contract.

Consequently, former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration in July 2013, flagged off the reconstruction of the highway, having re-awarded the project to Julius Berger Nigeria and Reynolds Construction Company Nigeria at a cost of N167 billion, with a completion period of four years.

The project ought to have been ready by 2017.

Culled from Vanguarfd