The Lagos State Government has commenced the process of awarding contracts for the construction of the 181 community roads across the 57 Local Government Areas (LGAs) and Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) in the State, in line with the promise made by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode.
The initiative to rehabilitate the roads within the communities was introduced in 2016 by the Ambode administration to fast-track development simultaneously with other major road projects across the State.
By the initiative, a total of 114 roads were either constructed or rehabilitated two per each of the 57 Councils in 2016, while in a bid to consolidate on the massive infrastructural drive of his administration, Governor Ambode last Thursday announced readiness to increase the number of the roads from 114 to 181.
According to the Invitation For Bids (IFB) which had since been published in major national dailies, the government announced the list of the roads and specification for the construction which include drainages, street lights and walkways.
The IFB also include the length, average width, number of roads, pavement and the duration for the project which is six months, while all bids must be submitted on or before February 17, 2017.
Speaking at the first Quarterly Town Hall Meeting for 2017, the sixth in the series, held at the Ajelogo Housing Scheme, Ajelogo Market Road, Akanimodo, Mile 12, Governor Ambode had said that with the latest plan, some of the councils will now have more than two roads especially in areas where there is need to fix other adjourning roads to a main road to improve on the road network.
The Governor said the need to scale up the road improvement efforts arose from the fact that he had received many requests on rehabilitation of roads from residents, adding that many of the roads captured for 2017 were key roads that would have positive economic impact on the people.
“I want to pronounce here that you should watch out next week in the newspapers, we are advertising 181 roads which would be done in all our local governments.
“What we have found out is that if we decided to continue with two, some of those roads are not linking each other to the main road, so most likely you would see that if we are supposed to do some roads in some local governments, it would only make economic sense if there is a linkage.
“So, you would see in the advert that some local governments would have like three, some would have four roads, but the average is 181 and if you divide that by 57, that would be a minimum of three roads from each local government,” Ambode said.