Minister of Work, Engr David Umahi, told journalists during an interview in his last tour of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway in Lagos that, going by the progress of work and the seriousness attached, the Federal Government will be commissioning the first 20 Kilometres of the highway before end of May this year. DAYO AYEYEMI, was there.
Can you tell us the nature of work within the first phase of Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway?
The good thing is that in this first section of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, Hi-Tech, the contractor, has sliced the entire 47 kilometer by six lanes into five sections. And every section is doing a similar work.
What do you mean by similar work?
I mean the removal of unsuitable materials. If you just turn to my right, you’ll see an example of that. As you can see, the depth at which we are going. We are also witnessing the demolition of shanties. If you turn to the right, you will see the Ocean Bay Estate, built on the gazetted alignment. They defied the law and we have an alternative. We have this location free and it’s by the ocean too. So that’s why we are following it.
We have embedded bad soil that is unsuitable to carry the road pavement. So, we are doing the same work in five sections.
With what Hi-Tech is saying, we can complete this section 1. We have directed them to slowdown the pavement after meeting with them because they told us about settlement. Within 24 months, it’s possible to achieve the settlement of 3cm.
So, they are bringing in another equipment that is going to assist us. And that’s why we have slashed the completion into two phases.
Slashing completion into two phases?
In section 1, we will be commissioning the first 20 kilometres before the end of May 2025. Even though another 10km would have been done at the end of the job, but continuously we are commissioning the first 20km.
We will have the road continuously sand-filled totally, and of course the completion of the remaining 27km minus 10km. That is another 17km before the end of the year. And of course, we also by May 29th, 2025, should have been able to complete 10km of section two, which is 55km. We are going to stop at the border between Lagos and Ogun.
How far about the payment of compensation to the owners of affected property along this route?
For people that are affected, we have paid. The last time I saw the papers, we had a total of N50 million compensation to pay.
How many people have been paid?
I’m not sure who has been paid. The people that were paid, they may not have been paid what they were expecting. Nobody has ever been able to meet his or her needs based on expectations.
I commend very highly the Ministry of Works, the Controller, the Department of Green Design and all the engineers and supervisors. And amazingly, the contractor, Hitech.
The good thing is for the contractor to have the interest of the nation. I can tell you that there was no design for the removal of topsoil.
Why?
It happened because we rerouted this corridor to save those properties. And so, they are still working and they have brought us to see the amount of refuse. And I have directed my people to document the survey, document it and include it.
And the good thing is that we should do this engagement very often so that the public will be part of the evaluation of what we are doing. And if we say we have removed bad soil to the depth of eight meters, nobody is going to doubt it because I am sure that you have archives where you are documenting all these things.
And generally, in 2025, before May 25th, we have directed the controllers to concentrate on a number of projects. At least a minimum of three projects must be commissioned. If we have funding challenges, we have decided to do commissioning in sections.
Some of our roads, like you have in northwest, you have the Sokoto down to Zamfara, down to Katsina and to Kaduna. It’s a total of 375 kilometers by two, which is 750 kilometers. We may not have all the money in 2025 to complete it.
There are four sections there, and we are going to be completing a minimum of 50 percent of that route. We are going to concentrate on that.
Other routes we are going to give attention to at north-central are Kano-Kasina and the Manando road in Kebi. We also have the Northern Bypass. We are going to give some of these projects a very big push.
So, we decided to concentrate about five projects per zone. If you come to South-South, you will see the entire east-west route. Starting from Lokoja to Benin, we have four sections there.
