By Ismail Abdulaziz
The Federal Government is planning two super highways across the country through a Public Private Partnership scheme.
Minister of Work Dave Umahi disclosed this to the State House Correspondents on Sunday after a meeting with President Bola Tinubu in Abuja.
He said that the highways would be from Abuja to Lagos and Port Harcourt to Lagos, adding that they would be provided with state of art facilities for the comfort of the travelling public.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that super highways are designed for travel at high speeds, having more than one lane for each direction of traffic, a safety strip dividing the two directions.
The minister said that the government has got commitments from stakeholders to make the project a success within reasonable period.
Umahi also disclosed that the president was briefed on the need to seek better appropriation for the funding of road projects to avoid unnecessary variations in cost and specifications.
He said that the National Assembly would be carried along to see the necessity of providing enough fund to road project that are beneficial to the people.
He also said that due to inappropriate funding, he has asked the president to direct the termination of road projects that have taken more than 10 years without completion.
The minister assured Nigerians that no project initiated by the past administration would be abandoned by government.
He said that the Tinubu administration inherited 2,604 projects worth N14 trillion covering 18,000 kilometres of roads, adding that a commitment was got for payment of four trillion out of this amount.
The minister added that the government was also committed to the use of reinforced concrete for road pavements across the country.
Concrete, he said, is capable of withstanding heavy loads, such as heavy vehicles, with less deformation and serves for years without major repairs.
Several factors affect concrete pavement performance, such as traffic, soil, environmental, economic and stress distribution factors.
He said that the merit of these would be the use of local materials and elimination of imported items which has been the cause of contract variations in the country..
On the structural defects on the Third Mainland bridge, Umahi said that work has started and articulated vehicles had been stopped from plying it for now.(NAN)
