The Federal Government has no plan to toll the rehabilitated Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos, the Minister of Works, Senator Dave Umahi.
Umahi spoke on Sunday to journalists’ after inaugurating the N40 billion Closed Circuit Television Camera Centre on the Third Mainland Bridge.
The CCTV centre was built by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC).
He said: “We will not engage construction on this bridge because it will entail static load on the bridge.
“It is also within the town, so it will introduce many bottlenecks; that is why we are not tolling this bridge,” he said.
Umahi said security would be handled by the police, noting that the 11-kilometre bridge would have a five-minute response time.
“We are allowing the police to do the needful.”
He added that a tow van and an ambulance were required on the bridge for emergencies.
“We want life to be very smooth and sweet for Nigerians; that is what President Bola Tinubu stands for. That is the reason God brought him in spite of all the challenges,” he said.
Inaugurating the centre, the Minister of Works, Sen. Dave Umahi, said that the current administration met a ‘very terrible Third Mainland Bridge’.
“When we came on board in 2023, we met a very terrible Third Mainland Bridge, Carter Bridge and Iddo Bridge both on the pavement, surface, infrastructure above the water and even infrastructure below the water.
“The President, therefore, directed total re-evaluation and rehabilitation of the surfaces of the Third Mainland Bridge and changing the expansion joints. Lagosians were very happy with the President for that beautiful work, and that work completed and commissioned is still succeeding because of the quality,” he said.
He said the ministry would be handing over a boat and two Hilux vans, which were part of the contract, to the police for monitoring of the bridge.
“If they need to incorporate other security agencies, they can do that, but the idea of this project is that we have a lay-by on the bridge, so we view everything going on on this bridge.”
Earlier, the Federal Controller of Works in Lagos, Mr Olufemi Dare, said that the centre was the first of its kind in Nigeria.
“I doubt if there is any bridge in Nigeria that has what we have deployed here today, where you have CCTV to monitor both the underwater and even the bridge itself.
“We have a boat that has been bought for surveillance of the bridge. There are two Hilux vans, too.
“We have 240 solar panels in this environment, and that is not enough. The whole place is fully air-conditioned. We have 10 inverters inside the building.
“We have the powering units. We have a transformer, a 300KVA transformer. We have a standby generating plant and monitoring screens,” he said.
He expressed gratitude to President Bola Tinubu for the provision and thanked Umahi for ensuring that due process was followed in establishing the centre.
“We have about 1,268 solar streetlights that are part of this contract,” he said.
He added that a bore was part of the project.
Dare said that the project’s contract sum was N40.17 billion.
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