Road construction in Apapa-wharf only 10% completed

The Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing (FMPWH) reported that the Apapa-Wharf Road construction in Lagos State has only achieved 10% completion.

The project execution was delayed due to the presence of gas pipes and other utilities in the road’s Right of Way(RoW) said Mrs Olukorede Keisha, an FMPWH engineer supervising the project on Tuesday at the project site.

Below is the interview the engineer(Mrs Olukorede Keisha) had with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

She said that the contractors handling the project had however resolved the problem.

200 metres of concrete road and 230 metres of drains had been constructed on section one of the project.

“The project is about 10 per cent completed; we finished 230 metres of drain and 200 metres of concrete road on section one.

“We have about four layers of road to make the pavement rigid; the road thickness is 600mm,’’ she said. It has four sections.

she also told NAN that a design alteration was done to take care of the gas pipelines in the RoW of the road so as to meet the completion date of June 2018.

“The pipes are encased so there is no need to relocate the pipelines again . We had to redesign in order to safeguard the pipes for work to continue.

“It is a shift in alignment, we shifted it forward,’’ she said.

She said that for a durable concrete road, they redesigned a solid foundation for a durable concrete road which gave the opportunity for deep excavation.

“On potholes on some portions of the highway, rehabilitation work had begun” she said.

According to Keisha, the construction work will be focused on during the christmas period in order to take care of the most critical portions on the reconstruction zone and other roads in Apapa.

NAN gave reports about rolling machines used to compact construction materials on about 500 metres stretch of the road on the Ijora/CMS Carriageway.

The machines were compacting soil-based materials to connect to a concrete section of the road.

Meanwhile, some of the road users have appealed for speedy completion of the project.

Mrs Kaka Kolo, a food vendor also appealed to the Federal Government to increase funding for road repair in Apapa. According to her,

trailers are the ones spoiling the road. The best thing is for government to give contractors more money to repair roads.

“Government should not wait for potholes to get big and trailers start falling before it does something,’’ she opined.

Also, a truck driver known as Mallam Awal Usman called for repair of all bad roads on the axis.

He urged collaboration of all government agencies to end gridlock in Apapa.

However, Usman praised traffic managers for checking traffic offences compounding gridlock on the axis.

Another truck driver, Mr Odu Nwoye also informed NAN that the collective effort of traffic managers had reduced accidents caused by bad roads and reckless driving on the axis.

Mr Babatunde Fashola, (Minister for power and housing) on June 17 signed a N4.34b Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with AG Dangote Construction Company Ltd. and some other stakeholders for the reconstruction of the four-kilometre Apapa-Wharf Road.

The project is being funded by AG Dangote Construction Company Ltd, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Flour Mills of Nigeria.