Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State says the Opebi-Mende-Ojota link bridge will be ready for commuters by the second quarter of 2024.

Mr Sanwo-Olu re-emphasised this during an inspection of the bridge to ascertain the level of work done on Tuesday.

He said the bridge, whose construction started over a year ago, had reached 65 per cent completion.

”We are still on track with the completion. We are still hoping that by the second quarter of next year, towards the third quarter, we should finish this entire road construction so that it can be handed over to the residents and also can be made available.

”There is still going to be a bit of furniture that you are going to see on this bridge. Eventually, it will look like another iconic bridge in Lagos, which will be similar to what we have in the Lekki axis,” Mr Sanwo-Olu said.

He said the government would encourage people who wanted to exercise by the bridge to do so and move freely.

Mr Sanwo-Olu stressed that the bridge is meant to solve a major traffic problem and provide alternative routes for Lagos residents.

”People that are commuting from Toyin, Allen, Opebi, how can they access the Ojota bridge? People from Maryland, how can they go on straight into Ikeja?

”So, it will solve a lot of the alternative problems that we have, either on Kudirat Abiola road, even as far as going towards Alausa, and it also tries to solve the major traffic issues we have on Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way,” he said.

The governor said the bridge was situated in very tough terrain, which had made the project manager, Julius Berger, do 20 metres of excavation to execute a solid bridge.

”The soil texture is really bad. In fact, the project manager, Julius Berger, says they have to do excavations of over 20 metres in some places so that they can preserve the land and they can work seamlessly,” he said.

(NAN)