Umahi: 30Kms of Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway Phase 1, Section 1 to Be Ready Before May 29

Bennett Oghifo

Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi has said that 30 kilometers of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway Phase 1, Section 1, will be completed before 29th of May this year.

The minister stated this yesterday while inspecting at the Lagos-Calabar Coaster Highway Section One Phase One. This was during the second day of his site tour to projects in Lagos State.

“So let’s get a commitment from the contractor, the Managing Director of HITECH, (the contractor) that before the 25th of May, we will be able to bring Mr. President here to commission the first 30 kilometers of this project.

The MD Hitech, Mr Dany Abboud promised the 30 kilometers, saying, “HITECH will aim and will try our utmost best day and night to deliver as His Excellency promised.

“We have 20 kilometers from the beginning of the project. We have 10 kilometers from the end of the project coming backward, and this is not continuous because we are aiming to deliver based on a proper standard, and we will try to reduce the settlement wherever there is, and to have a proper compaction, especially we are entering the rainy season as well. So, Your Excellency, yes, we will aim and we will try our utmost best to deliver the 30 kilometers of Section 1, as promised earlier, before the 25th of May 2025.”

Umahi then directed the “Department of Design and HITECH to, within the next 14 days, conclude on the final design of this Section 1 and Section 2, incorporating all the additional work.

He added, “This project is about 700 kilometers from Lagos to Calabar. And this Phase 1, Phase 2 remains Sokoto-Badagry and the Trans-Sahara.

And so this Section 1, we’ve been able to award this Phase 1. We’ve been able to award Section 1, 47 kilometers. We’ve been able to award Section 2, 55 kilometers. That will stop at a boundary between Lagos and Ogun State.

And then Section 3A and 3B are in Cross River and Akwa Ibom. And that is 65 kilometers. We’ve also awarded that.

“The actual construction will commence in those locations by the first week of March.

“This project is not just road construction. It is an investment. It has all the beautiful ingredients of an investment.

“We have train track in between the two carriageway. We have solar lights which will earn us carbon credits. We are doing this with reinforced concrete of 275 millimeters thick. With wide 20 millimeter roads. And this concrete pavement has low emission. So the federal government will earn carbon credit again.

“And we have cable channel. We’re also going to have the windmill energy installed along the coast. Which means that we have free energy to the adjoining communities.

“This section is going to decongest the Apapa Wharf. And it’s also going to solve the problem of the shallow shaft at the Apapa Port.

“So this project here, section one in particular, is going to decongest the entire corridor of Lagos State. And we move them through the 7th Axial Road that we are about to construct.”

“We had earmarked, by next month it would have been one year this project got started. And even though it was billed for 36 months, but Hitech was going to deliver this first section within 12 months. But we slowed them down because nature slowed them down.

“We encountered a section of over eight kilometers that had refuse dump. That happened in the past 20, 30 years. And the question that people would have been asking is, did you not do soil test before? We did.

“But to save people’s property, we had to reroute. And when we did reroute, we had to do soil test. And we discovered that we needed to remove those refuse to a depth of 10 meters, fill it back to the existing ground level, and then, of course, put the additional height to bring our level to the acceptable final level for our root pavement.

“And so we had to slow them down so as to achieve the desired consolidation. And the success is that we have achieved that consolidation, and we are moving. So what we want to aim at is to commission the first 30 kilometers of this Coastal Highways Phase 1, Section 1, before 29th of May this year.

“And that will be record-breaking. And you have seen the equipment before, and I challenge any other contractor that has this size of equipment to say so. So we are very confident that they will deliver accordingly.

“We also started Section 2. Also, we will talk to you when we get to that place.”