The Federal Government has said that the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger Bridge, the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway, and others are to be ready in the first quarter of 2022.
Mr. Babatunde Fashola, the Minister for Works and Housing, reveals this on Thursday in a live television programme in Abuja.
The roads were said to be grouped as essential infrastructure and projected to be delivered in less than two years.
Fashola said, “The Second Niger Bridge, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Abuja-Kaduna-Kano roads are part of the projects under the Federal Government’s essential infrastructure development fund and their expected delivery dates are in quarter one of 2022.”
The minister added that real construction work only commenced on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway when the Buhari administration came into power.
In his words, “Since 2007, no measure of reasonable construction work took place on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, except palliatives. It was when this government came that construction really started.
“Those who don’t use the road will not appreciate what is going on there, but those who use the road on a daily basis for their survival will tell you that the bottlenecks and traffic time on that road had significantly reduced.”
When he was reminded that the initial plan was to deliver the road next year, the minister responded that about one year was lost in the construction process.
According to him, “That was the plan and you know that we’ve lost almost a year of work and I complained at the time when the budget for that road was reduced from N31bn to N10bn, at the time we were owing the contractors N15bn.
“Essentially, no work was done in that year 2017 because the contractors specifically stopped work.”
