Despite public outcry over the precarious state of the Ijora- Apapa Bridge in Lagos, the Federal Government appears not to be bothered, as nothing has been done to remedy the situation.
They claimed to have made different calls to the Federal Government on the precarious state of the bridge and the need to work on it, but that their pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
Although, the Lagos State Government carried out some repair works on the expansion joints of the bridge two years ago, one of the residents, Mrs. Taiba Shogbade, said the repair works were done on one of the interchanges and not on the particular link bridge.
When New Telegraph carried out a tour of the bridge last week, potholes on the bridge had increased, while some of the asphalt overlays had peeled off, exposing its disjointed structural elements to weather.
A motorist, Mr. Abayomi Tokunbo, who works with an oil and gas company, told our correspondent that nothing had changed about the damaged bridge. He said that the situation had grown worse over time.
Our correspondent’s effort to seek the official position of government on the state of the bridge met a brick wall, as no official of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) at the Ijora office was ready to talk.
One of them asked this correspondent to direct his queries to Abuja, adding that “the bridge is still in order and all technical assessments of the bridge have been submitted to the head office.”
Further investigation revealed that FERMA lacked the required fund to properly rehabilitate and maintain the facility. However, stakeholders claim that the dilapidating nature of the bridge has been responsible for prolonged traffic jam, damage to vehicles and stress commuters encounter on the bridge as they move to and from Apapa, Lagos Island and mainland.
Ijora Bridge is a major entry route into Apapa, where the nation’s mostutilised seaports are located. Its interchange, which stretches from Apapa to Ijora Bridge, Ijora to Eko bridge, Apapa link bridge to Naval/Dockyard road, Ijora to Ajegunle and Brewery to Alaka axes, has been badly damaged.
From physical assessment, the expansion joints of the bridge are terribly disjointed from their members; columns supporting the bridge are already peeling off, while condition of its alignments cannot be ascertained.
The condition of the bridge has worsened in the last one year as heavyduty vehicles, oil tankers and container-laden trucks converted it to parking bay, following the unending traffic snarl in Apapa area.
A commercial cab operator under the bridge, Mr. Sulaimon Oseni, said the poor condition of the bridge was a major concern to them. Apart from the stress of having to endure the traffic jam due to the poor state of the bridge, he said passing through some spots when climbing the bridge had become an unpleasant experience to motorists.
Apart from trailers that always queue on the bridge to Apapa ports, he stated that motorists had to slow down at the locations of the expansion joints and bumps, leading to huge traffic jam as they struggle to outwit one another. Oseni said the bridge had been derelict for over 10 years, adding that it was also engulfed in fire about four years ago.
Since the fire incident, he said the condition of the bridge had worsened; noting that the volume of traffic, especially trucks loading petroleum products from Apapa, was a contributing factor.
A trader under the bridge, who simply identified herself as Iya Ibadan, narrated that at a time, the state government relocated some cab operators and traders hawking under the bridge due to fear that the bridge could collapse unexpectedly.
Another cab operator, who did not want his name mentioned, said that the damaged expansion joints of the bridge had been a source of vehicles breakdown. Minister of Power, Work and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, recently stressed the need to strengthen FERMA, disclosing that there was a bill that he met seeking to reform the road sector.
Fashola said because he was not there when the bill was passed to the parliament, it was sent to him for his input, which he had already done. “The inputs that have been made have gone to parliament and parliament has been graceful enough to send it back to me to make my input because they had started considering it before I came in.
I have made those inputs and now we are planning to go back to them,” he said. According to him, the bill is essentially to strengthen the road maintenance capacity of government and also “to put sustainability into financing and maintaining roads as people have done all over the world.”
