By : Adeyinka Aderibigbe
The dust over the reality of the Second Niger Bridge will be laid to rest on Thursday, when it will be opened to ease the yuletide traffic, reports ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE
Since he started living in Lagos, Charles Aniagolu (nom de plume) never missed travelling home in December. At least not until seven years ago, when the cost of travelling started to rocket, till the ravaging Coronavirus put paid to it completely, three years ago.
Until then, it was a ritual he, like many from Ibo hinterlands, observed yearly. It was almost a competition in Charles’ village, where sons living outside it came home to “show off” their city-made wealth. Nothing will stop him from going home this year. He wanted to ride, firsthand, on the Second Onitsha-Asaba Bridge, dubbed the Second Niger Bridge.
He recalled that he grew up with the knowledge of the construction of the bridge about 35 years ago. Now that it is completed, in his lifetime, he considers it a necessity to ride on it. And he will do, this month.
Many, who are of Charles’ age, or older, know the story of the Second Niger Bridge like the back of their hands, or the fits and starts of its funding; like the lines on their palms. Many had lost hope it would ever be completed as it donned the toga of a ‘white elephant project’ that had continued to gulp the nation’s wealth.
But, it seems the season of waste is over. The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, announced that the Second Niger Bridge would receive its first traffic, this Thursday.
Fashola said the bridge, which is 95 per cent completed, will from that day be opened to ease traffic, especially during the yuletide.
The Federal Controller of Works in Delta State, Mr. Jimoh Olawale, who represented Fashola, said the bridge would be opened for 30 days.
“As we know, during the Christmas celebration, commuters suffer hardship accessing the old Niger Bridge, but with this arrangement, traffic congestion on the Asaba-Benin Expressway will ease,” he said.
He said the Delta State government and the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) have been put on red alert to apply themselves to hitch-free vehicular movement.
“Motorists going towards Owerri direction would divert through the access road near the old Niger Bridge to the new bridge,” the controller added.
He also took time to address uses of compensation, explaining that the government had not taken possession of any property along the 17-kilometre Okpanam-Ibusa-Asaba-Oko bypass leading to the new bridge, but only served notice on the owners to get them removed as the structures were within the bridge’s right of way.
Just as those from Asaba will be able to use the bridge to cross into Onitsha, from December, the flow would be reversed from January 15, 2023 to benefit traffic from the East to the West of the country.
Like the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and other legacy projects, the Buhari administration had vowed to deliver the second Niger Bridge before it hands over power in May next year.
Emphasising that work on the access road to the Second Niger Bridge was not yet finished, the Minister, who said the reason for the temporary opening was to decongest the first bridge of the huge traffic on it during the yuletide, added that the access roads linking the surrounding towns to the bridge are yet to be completed.
“I believe it is good news so I can confirm that we have completed work on the Bridge. Right now, you can walk from one end of the bridge to the other; you can also drive from one end to the other.
“But the connecting roads that link the bridge are what we are working on; that has not finished,” Fashola said. Attributing the delay in completion of the work on the access routes to the bridge to the flooding occasioned by the predicted heavy rains and the stop- work order for Mondays in the Southeast by IPOB, Fashola, however, said the flood that occurred in the area during the season was also a blessing as the original level for the design of the access road had to be changed.
“The flood made us to redesign the height of that road and that is good for us. Happily and thankfully, it did not affect the bridge in any way …” he said.
Buttressing the positive impact of infrastructure, the Minister asked, “Why do we need the Second Niger Bridge; is it not because we have outgrown the first bridge? It is because people spend days there just to go for Christmas.
“That is part of poverty. That is the multidimensional poverty which this President said “I will relieve you of it and provide you a choice”.
“You don’t have to sleep overnight on the bridge because you want to go home for Christmas. That is part of what we are talking about. And he has also approved that since the bridge is finished, we should create a temporary access so that in the journey this Christmas, you can begin to experience what it will look like when the bridge is finally finished and we open it”, the Minister said.
The 1.6km (0.99 miles)-long Second Niger Bridge is a Federal Government’s project that is furnished with other ancillary infrastructure, including a 10.3 km (6.4 mi)-highway, Owerri interchange and a toll station at Obosi city, inaugurated in March 2022.
Last Bridge
The Second Niger Bridge crosses the Niger between Asaba, the Delta State capital, in the west and Onitsha in the east. When completed, it will be the last bridge over the Niger River, before it branches into its delta estuaries.
According to Wikipedia, the Niger River is the third longest river in Africa after the Nile and the Congo. It moves 7,000 m3/s water at Onitsha, which is more than 100 times as much as the Thames in London (65 m3/s) and almost three times as much as the Missouri river (2,450 m3/s) before reaching St. Louis in the United States. The Niger River separates Nigeria’s populous southwest, from the oil-rich southeast.
The first Niger Bridge, constructed in the 60s as a two-lane steel truss structure, is, hopelessly, overloaded, due to the fact that it must accommodate the traders, cart drivers, freight forwarders and the occasional cattle herds in addition to cars.
The phrase “Second Niger Bridge”, which has been used as an established term in politics since the 1980s, Wikipedia further stated, is misleading.’
“In fact, there are already seven major bridges over the Niger in Nigeria alone (not to mention in countries like Niger or Benin). It is therefore correct to speak of the Second Niger Bridge at Onitsha”.
Funding
The project is being funded through the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) created by President Muhammadu Buhari and managed by the NSIA.
PIDF is also used to fund the construction of Lagos-Ibadan expressway and the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano-Road.
History
The Second Niger Bridge was first conceived in the 1978/79 political campaign by then candidate Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).
In 1987, after warning about the state of the steel bridge across the Niger River by the then Minister for Works and Housing Abubakar Umar; General Ibrahim Babangida challenged local engineers to design the Second Niger Bridge. Rising to the challenge, The Nigerian Society of Engineers called NSE Prems Limited, which subsequently delivered a master plan. The addition of east-west railway line to the project, unfortunately the turmoil that hastened the end of Babangida’s regime stalled the plan.
Under the subsequent administrations, the project received scant attention. Upon the return to civil rule, President Olusegun Obasanjo reactivated the dream. However Obasanjo did nothing on the project, until five days before he handed over power to the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, when he flagged off the project in Asaba.
The incoming administration effectively inherited a ?58.6 billion proposed cost for a six lane, 1.8 km tolled bridge, which was to be completed in three-and-half years. The bridge was to be financed under a public private partnership (PPP) with 60 per cent of the funding coming from the contractor, Gitto Group; 20 per cent from the Federal Government of Nigeria, and 10 per cent from the Anambra and Delta State Governments. Unfortunately President Yar’adua untimely death stalled the project’s progress.
In August 2012, the Federal Executive Council under Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, approved a N325 million contract for the final planning and design of the bridge. During the 2011 Nigerian general election campaign period, the project was on President Jonathan to-do-list on or before 2015. At an Onitsha town hall meeting on August 30, 2012, President Jonathan had vowed to go into exile if he did not deliver on the project by 2015.
Though he never achieved the dream, he did not venture into exile either.
The lot fell on President Muhammadu Buhari administration, who first cancelled the earlier contract in June 2015, to actualize it. Work resumed on the Second Niger Bridge in October, same year and seven years after, with 95 percent of work done, Buhari is as good as handing the project over on schedule.
The bridge unarguably will reduce lost manhour, reduce wastages, reduce losses and enhance travel experience of Nigerians who have signed off to a life of pain and anguish anytime they find themselves plying the bridge.
Peerless
Fashola insisted Buhari’s investment in infrastructure is peerless, adding that when all sources of revenue fell, the administration simply innovated other funding sources, adding that the SUKUK, the Road Infrastructure Tax Credit Scheme, and the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund are among several avenues the administration has innovated change.
Appealing to the commuting public for patience, Fashola said, “So what I will then say is that you will expect a more efficient road if we use the road properly. “Please be patient; don’t be in a hurry and face oncoming traffic because it will just build up the whole place and that is what will cause gridlock and not our work but impatience”.
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