By ABAH ADAH, Abuja
The federal government says the first phase of 47 kilometres, km, of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway will be completed in May 2025.
Minister of Works, Sen. David Umahi who dropped this hint while holding a meeting with directors of the ministry and some contractors in Abuja also dispelled the rumour that work had stopped on the project site.
He also disclosed that the federal government had so far disbursed a total sum of N10bn as compensation to property owners affected by the demolition necessary for the construction of the Highway, adding that the ministry had reduced the project’s size from ten lanes to six as a cost-saving measure for the legacy project.
“Some people have been writing that we have stopped the project. No project is stopped. As we are talking now, over four kilometres of concrete road has been completed on six lanes.
“We had to establish a new path due to complaints made by MTN on its subsea cable and Okuaja community, we had to reroute not to the new alignment, not to the gazetted alignment but far away from the two, and we came back to a new alignment at kilometre 25.
“ So the work is going and it’s moving smoothly. We have paid the total compensation of close to N10bn. we are not owing and the contractor is highly commended for a very beautiful job, commitment and being very reasonable.
“These projects are investments, and they have inherent returns on investments, By May 29, 2025, we will have completed section one of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal highway. Apart from the land, we are going to acquire for tourism, factories and industries when we tow the road within ten years we would recover the cost of the money so it is an investment.”
Umahi, however, lamented that most contractors don’t have the required personnel and equipment to execute the job, hence they will resort to delay tactics to keep getting easy money from the ministry using the variation of price.
He warned them to refrain from submitting excessively large variations in price, noting that the government can’t keep giving out different prices for similar projects.
The minister equally announced that the current administration inherited over 2,600 projects valued at N15tn, lamenting that funding was a big challenge.
He said aside from the inherited projects and fund acute fund challenge, the current administration had initiated 330 emergency projects totalling N260bn, of which over 80 per cent of the had already been completed.
“We have 130 projects that Mr President approved on emergency basis totalling N260 billion. As at today, we have.completed over 80 per cent of such projects,” he said.
According to the Minister, a lot of new projects are also being executed, especially the constituency projects which constitutes about 90 per cent of the projects being handled by the ministry.
