The Lagos State Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Dr. Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, spoke recently with TUNDE ALAO, clarifying efforts to fix all Lagos State roads, explaining key challenges, and plans to meet the expectations of residents. Excerpts:
“THE challenge is that it is important that major roads are fully motorable before we fix the huge number of inner ones. Hence, the state government has gone ahead and fixed a lot of federal roads, thereby reducing our ability to fix the state roads financially. However, the state has embarked on and constructed a lot of major roads, and others are also under construction across the length and breadth of the state. Last year, we started the construction of 156 roads, and majority of these are inner roads. We have to manage the numbers of roads we are constructing at a time to prevent gridlock.
“As a state, we are not struggling with our structural plan of infrastructural challenges. We have a master plan that we are implementing. We certainly will not finish all our plans in one calendar year. That is not realistic, given the backlog that exists. The state government believes that infrastructure development is a major plank on which poverty eradication can rest.
“Hence, our concentration on major life and city/state changing projects, such as Lagos-Badagry Expressway, Isheri-Oshun-Jakande Road, which is now fully awarded to Hitech Construction Company to complement the bridge works that started some time ago. Also, the Blue rail line is another of such projects. The overall target of the state is to develop sufficient infrastructure portfolio across the length and breadth of the state that ultimately allows for a competitive business environment.
“There are major roads across the state. Some are federal roads while some belong to the state. The challenge is that it is important that these major roads are fully motorable before we fix a huge number of the inner ones. Hence, the state government has gone ahead and fixed a lot of federal roads, thereby reducing our ability to fix the state roads, financially.
“As for the roads in rural areas, we use the same approach, that is, rehabilitate as many as we can. But because we also know that we might not be able to do all in just a short time, we decided to grade and surface dress some roads this year, as a palliative, so as to give relief to road users. Isuti Road, Powerline Road in Ifako-Ijaiye and Oke-Agbo Street in Ojo Council are such roads. The essence is to allow for motorable roads because it will be a traffic nightmare if we shut down all the roads at a single time for rehabilitation or construction.”
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