LAGOS State House of Assembly Thursday questioned Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Obafemi Hamzat and the Special Adviser to Governor on Public Private Partnership (PPP), Ayo Gbeleyi, over the tolling of the newly commissioned Lekki-Ikoyi link Bridge.

In a move to have a convincing defense, Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General, Ade Ipaye, also joined the team.

The House, had at its emergency plenary last week summoned the duo to appear before it on Thursday to explain why the tolling would be necessary for a kilometre bridge and to clarify the concession agreement of Electronic Tolling System (ETS) for the Bridge.

The lawmakers had raised questions on tolling of the bridge despite the fact that the bridge was constructed with taxpayers’ money.

Leader of the House, Ajibayo Adeyeye queried the government’s rationale to arrive at the revenue formula for the tolling, adding that many people were agitated about the tolling because it was built without making any provision for Corporate Social Responsibility to the people.

It would be recalled that the executive has commenced the collection of tolls on the bridge since June 2nd.

In his defence, Gbeleyi stated that the threshold for the tolling hinged upon the fact that it operates on “non-compete clause”, adding that the government wanted sufficient amount of money to be able to maintain the bridge and that was how the toll tariff was arrived at.

“It is around this parameter that we have projected for the bridge and arrived at the toll tariff”, he said.

The Deputy Speaker, Taiwo Kolawole, stressed that in the selection process of the tolling company, there ought to be open bidding to allow transparency.

He maintained that local investors ought to have been given precedence instead of contracting it out to a South African company. “I’m surprised why we need an international partner to toll our own bridge when we have our own engineers.”

In his defence,  Hamzat, lamented the poor state of engineers in the country, but revealed that before construction, the state government had to wait for six months to train welders to work on the bridge.

In his remarks, Ade Ipaye, stated that the sharing formula presupposed that certain amount of money would be generated to maintain the sustainability of the bridge, adding that if the traffic volume exceeds, there would be adjustment in the sharing formula.