.urges motorists to obey traffic rules                  

By Olasunkanmi Akoni

Following the hardship experienced by motorists and residents along Lagos Ibadan Expressway , with attendant gridlock due to the ongoing road reconstruction, Lagos State Government has called on Federal Ministry of Works and Housing to suspend further work after the Edel-el-Kabir, Sallah, Celebration.

Reacting to the daily gridlock along the axis, Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Transportation, Engr. Abdulhafiz Toriola, told Vanguard that the state Ministry of Transportation has approached the Controller of Works in Lagos of the need to suspend further work along the axis to ease off expected influx of vehicles and reduce hardship during the coming Eid-el-Kabir, Muslim celebration, scheduled to commence on Wednesday.

Toriola, who expressed concern over the persistent gridlock on daily basis, said the Ministry of Transportation has directed deployment of more Lagos State Traffic Management Authority, LASTMA, personnel to boost traffic management pending the completion of the project slated for July ending.

According to him, “We are aware of the hectic traffic situation along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway which is due to the ongoing road reconstruction by the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing.

“We are deeply concern by the situation which we are trying to mitigate from our end. We have approached the new Federal Controller of Works in Lagos, Mrs Olukorede Kesha, to consider temporal suspension of further work, so as to reduce the gridlock along the axis.

“We proposed the opening up of completed parts of the road to motorists. This is necessary because of the Sallah holiday for those who will be travelling in and out of Lagos for the celebration. We are expecting huge influx of vehicles on both side of the road.

“The last Thursday, rolling into the weekend gridlock was simply hectic. It only shows that Lagos is over populated. All we can do is to effectively manage the situation through effective mechanism which we are already deploying with the Federal partner.

“Meanwhile, the Federal Ministry of Work, through, the Controller, has promised to double their effort by working late into the evening to finish the job on time without further delay.

“We both, Federal and State delegation, carried out an on the spot assessment of the axis at the weekend to look at areas where improvement could be brought in to ease off traffic pending completion of the project in July ending.”

Toriola, however, gave travel advisory to motorists to make use of Ikorodu-Odogunyan Road to Sagamu and link their destination to reduce vehicular volume along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, as the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway is not an option due to bad state of the road.

He therefore, appealed to motorists and residents to bear with the governments as everything is being done to address their plights.

Toriola called for compliance with traffic signs and the directives of the traffic management personnel deployed to ensure seamless movement within the corridor.