- He explained that tolling the road was a way of recouping the money spent the project in the shortest possible time
The Federal Government has disclosed that Nigerians who plan to ply the Lagos-Calabar coastal road when completed will have to pay N3,000 on average per toll gate.
Nigeria’s Minister of Works Dave Umahi made the disclosure on Thursday when he was featured on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief.
Umahi stated that an average of 50,000 vehicles were expected to use the road daily and pass through the toll gate when the monumental project was completed.
He explained that tolling the road was a way of recouping the money spent the project in the shortest possible time.
“Let me leave out the infrastructure along the corridor. Let me just concentrate on the tolls and I put 50,000 vehicles as an average passage on these toll points per day,” Umahi said on the breakfast show.
“I put N3,000 as an average cost. N3,000 because the cars could be like N1,500, and the big trucks could be like N5,000,” he said. “So, we put an average”.
“In 15 years, you make back the money,” he said, dismissing calls that the cost budgeted for the road was high
The road project has sparked controversy in some quarter, with many saying the details of the project, especially how the contract was awarded, are shrouded in secrecy.
Former Vice president, Atiku Abubakar, had called out the federal government and presidency on the vagueness and opaqueness of the contractual agreement of the project, saying important information regarding such project of national significance shouldn’t be shrouded in secrecy.
He implored the Tinubu government to be transparent, forthright and come clean to Nigerians on the cost, design, contractor and other sundry details of the road construction.
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