The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola said the sit-at-home order by the Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB) affected the completion of the Second Niger Bridge project.
He announced a new target date for the completion of the ongoing Second Niger Bridge in the southeastern part of the country.
Fashola disclosed this during an interview on Channels Television, Sunrise Daily, on Wednesday.
The Nigerian government had earlier shifted the completion date for the multi-billion naira bridge, linking Delta and Anambra States, from the earlier scheduled date of October 2022 to the first quarter of 2024.
Fashola said while construction workers work on Saturdays, a 52-day loss cannot easily be made up for in construction work.
Asides from the sit-at-home order, other challenges like relocating transmission lines connecting the East to the West across the Niger River have also contributed to the delay.
“These dates keep shifting and people must remember that on the eastern side, our contractors have not been able to work on Mondays for almost two years and that has affected the completion date”, Fashola said.
The minister however promised that the new target date to deliver a perfectly completed Second-Niger Bridge will be April/May 2023.
He added that the bridge would be inevitably tolled to ensure that it is maintained to serve Nigerians for a number of years.
The Nigerian government had a few days ago opened the bridge to ease transportation ahead of Christmas and New Year celebrations.
Fashola, however, noted that it would be closed to traffic on January 15, 2023.
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