SAN FRANCISCO, July 26, (THEWILL) – Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that the reconstruction of the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway will commence in two weeks as part of the Federal Government’s plan to find a lasting solution to the gridlock around the axis.
He disclosed this during a dialogue on Thursday with stakeholders in the company of the State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode; Minister for Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi; Managing Director of Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala-Usman, among others.
“We have been working quite hard now to get approval for road construction. Among the roads are the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway and Mile 2- Liverpool roundabout are important roads but they have been delayed but I am personally working to ensure that we could get that through and we are trying to look at immediate solutions that can be done and how the process could be expedited to achieve results,” he said.
“I can guarantee that we will get all the approvals done. I don’t think that it should take us more than two weeks to get the approval so that we can begin the work.
“There are so many other bad areas, especially the coconut area in front of Tincan Port, the Leventis to Wharf Road is also another area we are looking at, the rehabilitation of the Creek Road so that we can have a two-lane access into the ports and all of those are important roads and all of them are Federal roads, so we have a responsibility to ensure that these things are done.”
On the situation with other Ports across the country and the need to decongest the Apapa Tincan Ports, the Vice President listed insecurity as one of the major issues preventing the Ports in Port Harcourt, Warri, Onne, Calabar and others from operating, however, adding that the Federal Executive Council had recently approved a security arrangement in the Ports to enable them to function optimally.
“A few weeks ago, the Federal Executive Council approved a maritime security arrangement for all of those areas and that has already been deployed. So we expect that as soon as the security architecture is laid out, we should be able to use those Ports frequently and that would, of course, decongest the Apapa Tincan Ports,” Osinbajo said.
“As Mr. President had directed, what I intend to do, is that we should meet as frequently as possible. We have already drawn up some roadmap and a checklist of the various things that we need to do in the next couple of weeks to ensure that we are able to ease the situation around here and make it more decent for people to live in this community and work in this axis. It is important for us as a country and commercially also and we are definitely committed to making sure that it works,” Osinbajo said.
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