The Minister for Power, Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola has dismissed reports that Third Mainland Bridge will be closed for 27 days.
He said this on Monday while addressing some confusion over the period for the road closure, on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.
According him, the bridge will only be closed for three days, not 27 months as some media houses had reported.
Refuting it, he said: “I think somebody mistook the date 27th of July for 27 months, I don’t know how that came about but there was a signed statement from my office and it didn’t contain 27 months”.
“The 3-day closure will enable the contractors assess the true state of the road, after which repair works will commence by the end of the year or at the start of next year (2019).”
According to the minister, the closure would have come much earlier, but the government decided to wait until schools begin to go on vacation, adding that the volume of traffic on the road during that period would reduce.
“The statement we put out was that it was going to be closed for three days, from the 27th of July.
“We were torn between maintenance and safety and people’s convenience but essentially, the first three days at the end of this month as issued in our press statement, will be for investigative work to be conducted to assess the current condition.
“There is a procurement for maintenance that has been approved but between that time and now, some things may have changed so we wanted to do an examination again just to be sure that there has been no material deterioration beyond what we procured.
“After that, our engineers and contracting firms will then lay out the plan of works.
“Some of the equipment and materials have to be imported, either later in the year or early next year, then we will be able to start the repair.
“That will imminently compel some closure as we have had in the past when I was governor. We closed it for about 12 weeks but (this time) we will try to reduce the period of closure as much as possible,” he said.
