The Federal government has said that a total overhaul of the layers of asphalt on the Third Mainland Bridge will commence at the latter end of January 2024.
This was made known by the Federal Controller of Works in Lagos State, Mrs Olukorede Keisha, during an interview on a national Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily adding that the bridge will be closed for 6 months to enable proper repairs.
This is coming barely a day after the Federal Government announced that it will shut the bridge for 24 for palliative works on Saturday (tomorrow)
The bridge is to be shut for 6 months
Keisha said, “So we were saying let us do a complete overhauling of the asphalt overlay some of them have been long overdue because we haven’t done that in the last 30 years. It is just the failures that have shown up that we have been addressing.
“It is going to be a complete overhauling of the asphalt layer on both bounds and then replacing it with new ones, so that will give us relief for the next 10 years.
“The Federal government has awarded that contract already, and preparatory works are pending when the contractor moves to the site because there are some elements of repairs that need to be imported.
“Pending that we just want to do palliative work to provide relief for motorists.
“It is going to take the contractor 3 months to import those elements needed for the repair.
“One bound will be 3 months then we will divert to the other bound once we are done with this bound we will bring back traffic to this lane.
“Afterwards we were going to have a very brand new road.’’
Repairs dependent on monetary allocation
On the palliative works on the Third Mainland Bridge which is commencing tomorrow, the controller said the project was heavily dependent on the monetary allocation disbursed for the Federal roads across the state.
She said, “What we have been doing is according to the funds available, You know you can’t do beyond the funds available to you.
“Nigeria is a large state, and the funds available to the Federal Ministry of Works in its entirety will have to be shared by the 37 states.
“So what comes to us Lagos will have to be shared amongst all the Federal roads in Lagos.”
She also indicated that the present government was determined to do away with the previous mode of road repairs across the country.
She added, “What we have been doing is sectional repairs, we look at areas that have failed and promptly attend to those areas and when you attend to this area this year, you discover another area is going to come up next year.
“But this new administration has said no to sectional repairs because if we do that we are going to have what we have been doing before and next year another area will show up as a failure.”
