The Infrastructure Bank Plc has urged motorists and other users of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway not to despair about the current lull in the completion of the N167bn project.
In a statement after its board meeting in Abuja on Thursday, the Managing Director of the Infrastructure Bank Plc, Mr. Adekunle Oyinloye, said that they should, rather, embrace the conviction that the nation’s number-one highway would be completed in due course in line with the change mantra of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
Oyinloye said that soon as the legal issues surrounding the project were resolved, construction work which, he said, had reached 30 per cent completion stage, would resume in earnest.The TIB managing director added that additional financial commitments had been secured from the project financiers through whom the initial N50bn was raised for the project.
He said that all the stakeholders on the project, including the Federal Ministry of Works, the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission and the contractors – Julius Berger Plc and RCC – were determined to ensure its completion by the July 2017 scheduled date.
Oyinloye commended the perception of the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, on the state of infrastructure in Nigeria and the concept of Public-Private Partnership in rescuing them from decay.
He also disclosed that the bank was working on the design of a new 280-kilometre “Greenfield dual carriageway” that would link Abuja with Ibadan through Kwara State.