The Lagos State Government’s suspension of the Fourth Mainland Bridge stunned many who were already dreaming of how it will address the chaotic traffic in the city. The project was stalled because of fund, ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE reports.
•Funding stalls Fourth Mainland Bridge
It is tagged the Fourth Mainland Bridge, a super highway linking Lagos Island from Ikorodu. With the bridge, traffic on the Third Mainland Bridge is expected to reduce, but the much-touted Fourth Mainland Bridge has got stuck on the drawing board. Last week, the Lagos State Government said the cost of building the bridge was too much for it to bear. For now, it said, the project is aborted for financial reasons.
If it had its way, the Babatunde Fashola administration would have loved to leave the bridge as one of its legacies.
Coming next to the 10-lane Mile 2 to Badagry Expressway, with the blue and red line lite rails which the government is constructing, the Fourth Mainland Bridge would have complemented the government’s effort to reduce traffic time in the city.
The Fourth Mainland Bridge would have redefined the state’s capacity to respond to the expanding needs for transportation infrastructure, especially roads, in a state which population is reputed to be growing at about six per cent per annum. The population is said to be about 20 million.
Last week the government said it had no financial capacity to embark on the project. Perhaps, the government may also have been hamstrung by time. The administration has less than 10 months before politicking takes over. With the electoral unpire out with the time table for next year’s general elections, it appears there may not be time enough to dedicate to the project, making it safer not to start, than turning it into a white elephant project.
Speaking at a budget breakdown at the Bagauda Kaltho Press Centre, Alausa, Ikeja, last Tuesday, the Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Ben Akabueze and his counterpart from the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat, said the cost of actualising the bridge was too heavy for the government.
But besides the financial cost, put at a princely sum of N320 billion, are other costs among which was the demolition of no fewer than 318 buildings described as “beautiful houses,” which are currently standing on the bridge’s initial alignment (right of way), the cost of which have not been factored into the cost of construction.
Hamzat explained that it was difficult for the state government to continue with the previous alignment for the construction of the bridge because of its huge requirements and expenses. Were the government to stay with the old alignment, Hamzat said, it would be battling with owners of the buildings most of whom might bog the project down with litigation, though they lacked valid documents.
Though the old right of way would have left the project with a 3.5 kilometre, (making it one of the shortest in the world), government took the pains to embark on another alignment for the project, stretching it from 3.5 to eight kilometres.
Buttressing Akabueze assertion, Hamzat said with a kilometre of the project estimated at N40 billion at the prevailing market rate, the government would need N320 billion to actualise the dream.
He said: “To construct a kilometre of that bridge, we need about N40 billion. We would also need to factor the cost of demolishing 318 buildings into the project. A lot of these buildings are beautiful houses.”
He expressed concern that though larger per cent of these buildings do not have genuine building permit, that would not make demolishing them cumbersome for the government.
But besides the issue of litigation that may arise from retaining the old right of way which has now become contentious, is the reality that government equally need to capture, vide a budget, the cost of an alternate road in and out of the bridge.
According to Hamzat, “we equally realised that motorists will need an exit route away from the bridge. We had intended to build a road through which motorists could link Ijede in Ikorodu, with another link opening up to the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. The cost of this 22 kilometre-long alternative road has equally not been factored into the initial budget.”
For Hamzat, the bridge is not just a mere bridge that can be constructed in haste, it requires specific planning.
The latest revelation from the two commissioners was the closest the Fashola administration has ever openly admitted failure on the ambitious project.
Up till the fourth quarter of last year, the government continued to restate its commitment to actualising the project.
About July last year, the government had raised the hopes of Lagosians to the imminent take-off of the project, the cost of which it then put at N220 billion. Akabueze at the forum disclosed government’s willingness to farm its execution to the private sector on a public private partnership (PPP) model.
Since it inherited the project in 2007, from the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, Fashola has been one of the project’s greatest fan, canvassing its timeliness and the readiness of his government to take it beyond paper works.
More appropriately, the bridge intends to link Ikorodu to Lekki, in the Eti-Osa Local Government Area and home to the Lekki Free Trade Zone. The bridge intends to soak up the heavy vehicular traffic approaching Lagos Island from the Eastern flank of the state, giving Lagosians and motorists living along the Ikorodu axis the opportunity to link up with the Island, without hitting the Third Mainland Bridge.
The bridge was meant not to have any rival in sheer aesthetics. Being a two-layered bridge, the upper layer is designed as the motorway, while the lower layer is a pedestrian walk way to be adorned with ornamental flowers and small parks.
The two-level bridge will not only function as a means of vehicular traffic on its upper level, it will also stimulate and accommodate pedestrians’ social, cultural and commercial interactions on its lower level –a novel of sorts in this part.
While opening the Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge early last year, Governor Fashola again restated the need for this crucial infrastructure, adding that even the fifth and sixth bridge are undebatable necessity to address the growing need of Lagosians for expanded road network.
He said: “Of course, the compelling need for a Fourth Mainland Bridge and possibly a Fifth and Sixth bridges and expanded ferry services are all now no longer debatable.
“We are working ceaselessly to start the commencement of the Fourth Mainland Bridge and we have made lots of progress to soon commence an alternative mode of crossing the lagoon from Lekki to Ikorodu with the completion of the Ipakodo and Badore ferry terminals, as we race to conclude the Osborne Terminal that will complete what I call the Lagos Lagoon ferry triangle.”
He said the Fourth Mainland Bridge fits perfectly into the government’s modest public transportation management framework that hopes to integrate the road and rail with water transportation with the vision to encourage commuting Lagosians to embrace public transportation options-rail, vehicles or ferries.
Fashola said the presence of more bridges round the state would provide a shield for motorists and prevent a total lock down in case of repairs as it happened during the recent repair of seven main joints of the Third Mainland. He added that the existence of Eko and Carter bridges as well as the ferry services made it possible for the repairs to be carried out without grinding daily commuting to a halt.
Back then, he said his administration was more than ready to commence the construction of the bridge, but the position of his aides last week have put that determination in abeyance.
The latest position seem to have confirmed the suspicion by Peoples Democratic Party, the main opposition party in the state that the fourth bridge had all the while been “a white lie.”
The party which had all along flayed the delay in the execution of the project which had been on the drawing board since 2006, wasted no time in condemning government’s desire last year to farm its construction to the private sector.
A statement by the party’s Publicity Secretary, Taofik Gani, called on the Federal Government which constructed the first three bridges in the state, to come to the aid of the suffering masses by providing the financial backbone needed for the construction of the badly needed bridge which the party admitted would aid easy transportation within the metropolis.
“We are appealing to the Federal Government to come to the aid of the suffering Lagosians by constructing the bridge described as impossible by the Lagos State government,” the statement said.
The Nation’s checks during the week revealed that it was not only the opposition that is irked by the decision to finally suspend the bridge construction.
Cross section of Lagosians living in Ikorodu said the government might have dealt them an unsavory blow with the decision by the Fashola government to jettison the bridge.
Kaoli Amsa, a sand miner at Majidun a suburb in Ikorodu, said the bridge would have been the icing on the cake of the people of Ikorodu who have been praising the good work of the administration in the area, where government is championing an infrastructural renewal by expanding the Ikorodu Expressway.
Ezekiel Omotehinse, a software engineer said the fourth mainland bridge is a necessity going by the growth rate of the state. “We needed a new bridge that would take traffic off the present ring of bridges and provide new alternatives to people living along the route’s axis. He flayed government’s excuse of the high cost of the project, adding that since the project was inherited from the immediate past administration, there ought not to be incursions into its right of way. He said government’s admittance that the buildings were “beautiful,” presupposes that the buildings might have been built or owned by patrons of the government who would rather be shielded by the government.
He wondered whether government would have bothered to regale Lagosians with the tales of the aesthetics of the buildings, if they were built by the poor, adding that the fact that government admitted that those properties lacked permits was enough to earn them demolition.
“Why would the government be telling us that it would not be able to go ahead with the construction because some buildings have appropriated its right of way? Why can’t such buildings be separated first, in the overriding public interest, as they used to claim when they come to demolish properties belonging to the poor? What is the guaranty that its successor would not run into similar challenges whenever they are ready to commence the project, as the right of way was not clearly demarcated and preserved by its officials.”
He, however, commended the government for coming clean with the people and telling them how things stands on the project without leaving room for speculators to spread rumours.
He said rather than beginning the project and getting stuck, government had come clean by saying it cannot finance the project.
