FG to Enforce Use of Weigh Bridges 

Bennett Oghifo

The federal government will soon enforce the use of weigh bridges to protect federal roads and other road assets.

The Federal Controller of Works in Lagos, Engineer Olukorede Kesha,
stated this during an inspection of the Lotto Bridge Interchange along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, recently. 

The bridge was damaged by a low-bed vehicle carrying a tractor.
Kesha said,  ”I think that, very soon, I want to believe that the weigh bridges will be operational so that most of these overloaded trucks can be weighed.

Most of these vehicles are not road worthy and they carry more than their capacity. In the advanced world, a bad road is the one that causes accidents, but here it is a good road that causes accidents because of over-speeding recklessness on the part of the drivers and overloading. 
She said what the driver of the low-bed did was “very unacceptable because that load could have been adjusted even from wharf. He was bringing it from the port and they just felt the way it was packed it could go like that not minding whether there are constraints on the road.
“A normal headroom is five meters. We even went above it. The minimum headroom there is 5.6 meters, it ranges between 5.6 and six meters.

“So we went above the meters because we know our people. So bad for somebody now to come and destroy this national asset. We have done this bridge. What this one is just waiting is just the connecting ramps. That’s what has been delaying this and the contractor has been commissioned to take off from where Julius Berger stopped, and that’s doing the ramps here so that it becomes accessible and then usable for every one of us. Then somebody came and destroyed this national asset and set us back by months.” 

She said the driver has been apprehended and is in police custody.
On the Sagamu Iperu road, she said, “A low-bed that was carrying an excavator from Apapa Port hit a beam. I think they didn’t control it from the port very well to lower it so that it can go under.

“I think it happened early in the morning on Wednesday and it rammed into this and it destroyed five beams, but two are terribly affected, and they need to be outrightly replaced.

“So that means a loss for Nigerians, a loss for the motoring public and a loss on the economy of Nigeria, because once we want to do these repairs now, we will have to block this road to divert the traffic here to the other side.

“And you know what that means for Lagos-Ibadan road. It will cost the country a lot of money, the damage is a huge one and we are going to use him to serve as a lesson and deterrent to others, so that they will know the level their stupidity is going to affect Nigerians and we are not going to entertain such going forward. 

“An intensive and comprehensive assessment is still ongoing. It started since Friday, but the duration and period for the repairs is going to take sometime.

“The Lotto Bridge is not in use for now. We just plan to put it in use, and we’re not going to put it in use until all repairs are done. As I said, it’s the same road that you ply that we ply. So we have a responsibility and a duty to fix it and make it work, so we don’t want an incident or accident at hand. We are going to give it all it takes to ensure safety of lives and property.

“When the bridge comes into use, its going to help people going to Ikorodu, Sagamu and Mowe.”