Abigail ErhiagbojeThe Federal Controller of Works for Lagos State, Engr. Korede Kesha has disclosed plans by the Federal Government to shut down the Third Mainland Bridge for urgent repairs from October 21st to 22nd.
Kesha disclosed this in an interview with Channels TV during the Sunrise Daily programme on Friday, 20 October 2023. According to her, “Third Mainland bridge was long overdue for complete overhaul and maintenance works. What we did in the past was just periodic maintenance and routine maintenance, but what we want to do now is emergency repairs, complete overhauling of the entire stretch of the carriage…and replacing it with fresh asphalts, that’s what we want to do now”.
In response to what the initial maintenance structure was, she replied that it had been previously carried out on the bridge over the years but based on the funds that had been available at their disposal, as they cannot carry out work above the funds that are made available to them.
“Nigeria is a large state, the funds available to the Federal Ministry of Works in its entirety has to be shared by thirty-seven states and what comes to Lagos has to be shared among all the Federal roads in Lagos, so what we have been doing is sectional repairs over the time. We look at the areas that have failed and then we promptly attend to that area. And, when you attend to this area this year, you discover that is gonna come up next year and that’s what we’ve been doing year in and year out.”
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“But now, the last administration decided that Ok let’s do more than that…but this new administration is saying no, because if we do that, we are gonna have what we have been doing before, next year another place is going to show up as a failure. So, we are saying OK, let’s do complete the overhauling of the asphalt…some of them have been long overdue because we have not done that in the last thirty years, it’s just the failures that show up that we have been addressing. So now, it’s gonna be a complete overhauling of all the asphalt areas on both bounds and replacing it with new ones, so that would give us relief for the next maybe ten years”, she said.
She stated the intention of the government to carry out the repairs on Saturday 21st, October 2023, and the fact that the federal government already gave out the contract to a contractor. She also stated that the contractor cannot fully move to the site of the repairs because of some elements of the repairs that still have to be imported, therefore only palliative works will be carried out in the time being in order to provide relief to motorists plying the bridge.
Another important information she disclosed is the fact that the complete overhauling of the bridge is gonna take six months and it would begin towards the end of January 2024 because it would take the contractor roughly three months to import the elements that would be needed for the repairs. And, this automatically means that the Third Mainland Bridge will be closed completely closed for six months.
When asked if concrete would be used instead of asphalt for the repair of the bridge, she replied in the negative and that only asphalt repairs would be duly carried out on the bridge as according to her, “the bridge itself is a concrete deck which just needs an asphalt overlay…”.
And, concerning the Saturday/Sunday repairs, she said repairs will only be carried out on one bound; the Adedeji bound, which is the most critical section of the road and will be closed to traffic from Saturday 12 midnight to Sunday 12 midnight. The repair will be carried out on the entire stretch of the road to give room for the contractor to look out for all the affected areas and proffer the needed solution to them.
She also noted that other bad sections of the road will also be touched but will not be closed to traffic.
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