Fashola blames IPOB’s sit-at-home order for failure to complete Second Niger Bridge

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has shifted the blame of the federal government failure to complete the Second Niger bridge to the Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB) which imposed sit-at-home order on Mondays in the southeast.

Fashola in a media interaction on Wednesday affirmed that the IPOB sit-at-home order contributed immensely to the delay in completion of the Second Niger Bridge project.

According to the minister, “these dates keep shifting and people must remember that on the eastern side, our contractors have not been able to work on Mondays for almost two years and that has affected the completion date.”

He noted that while construction workers work on Saturdays, a 52-day loss cannot easily be made up for in construction work.

Fashola said that some other issues such as relocating transmission lines connecting the East to the West across the Niger River, contributed to days lost and contributed to the slowness which affected the early completion of the bridge within the time earlier stipulated.

Fashola added that construction is taking place in a marshland, and as such, there is great need for dredging and sand filling, process which he says cannot be rushed.

Fashola stressed that the reason the ministry and the contractors have made progress on the road so far because they have employed the use of Prefabricated Vertical Drains which accelerate settlement and drainage and as such, workers can start building quicker than would ordinarily have been expected.

The minister disclosed that the new date to deliver a completed Second-Niger Bridge will be April/May 2023, saying that, inevitably, the bridge will be tolled, indicating that users have to pay,  to ensure that it is maintained to serve Nigerians for many years.