THE Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, on Tuesday, said that it was the priority of his administration to ensure the completion of the B6 and B12 Roads otherwise known as Constitution and Independence Avenues respectively.
The roads traversed the World Trade Centre and the Diplomatic Zones.
Speaking during an impromptu visit to the site, the minister said, the roads were major infrastructures that held the key to the economic and social vibrancy of the City, hoping that completion of the roads would enable allotees develop their plots and bring out the skyline of the city centre.
Malam Bello expressed delight at the partial opening of some segments of the Constitutions road which has already brought some relief on the traffic coming from Airport Road into the heart of the city.
He said he was happy that motorists coming from the Airport could now drive straight across the Churchgate building without the detour which made driving clumsy, and expressed satisfaction that the Julius Berger Nigeria Plc has justified all payments made to it while reminding them of the need for proper installation of street lights at strategic points.
The completed segments include the bridges near the World Trade Centre, the National Stadium and Magic Land along with their complementary ramps, loops, arterials and tangent roads.
Briefing the minister, the Acting Director of Engineering, Engineer Shehu Ahmed said the scope was to complete the outer carriageways and their bridges as the inner ones have been completed earlier, adding that motorists could now travel in dual mode to Three Arm Zone on the Constitution Road.
He disclosed that some major arterials were added to the scope of work by the present administration to make the road more functional, in view of the major train station by the World Trade Centre and the anticipated completion of the Rail Mass Transit project by the end of December, 2017.
In his remarks, the Divisional Manager of Julius Berger Plc, the contracting firm, Dr Lars Richter said that the funding which the company got from the present administration has facilitated the mobilisation of their personnel and machinery to work and that everything is going well.
“As you can see, we are working in all a five nodal areas at the same time and we hope to continue to do so as long as fund is made available”, he added.
Dr Richter gave assurances that some segments of the works would be completed before December, 2017, some in 12 months’ time, while the entire works, including the Independence Avenue would be fully delivered in two years’ time.
It will be recalled that works on the roads were very skeletal since 2011 because of paltry budgetary provisions, but the present administration recently cleared all the backlog of payments owed the company.
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