By LYDIA CHIGOZIE-NGWAKWE

The Federal Government is planning to deploy robotic machines for underwater inspection of bridges nationwide, the Minister of Works, Sen. Dave Umahi, announced on Sunday.

At a stakeholders? engagement on Section 2 of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project, Umahi said that the move was to reduce the cost of hiring divers for underwater assessments.

He said: ?We are going to locate a robotic kind of machine that will be able to do the diving to allow us to see everything happening under the water in all our bridges.?

According to him, hiring divers to go under the water to check what is happening inside is causing a lot of money.

He said that the Managing Director of HITECH Construction Company, Danny Abboud, would help to ?locate that mission and then we would like to buy it?.

Umahi also declared a ?bridge emergency? to assess the condition of bridges, particularly those constructed 53 years ago, across the country.

?We want to declare, I don?t know the word to use, bridge emergency, on our bridges, to know what is happening 53 years after we constructed these bridges, not only in Lagos but nationwide,? he said.

He announced that President Bola Tinubu would inaugurate several projects starting from May 1.

He added that more projects would be inaugurated by December.

?I want Nigerians to have hope in the renewed hope administration as we are building for the future and inherited projects are given adequate attention,? he said.

The minister reiterated that the Federal Executive Council had issued a directive prohibiting dredging within a 10km radius of any bridge nationwide.

This, he said, followed reports of dredging activities near the Third Mainland Bridge which, Julius Berger warned, could lead to the bridge?s collapse.

?We saw dredging on that Third Mainland Bridge, and Julius Berger had warned that, should this dredging continue, that bridge would collapse,? Umahi said.

He emphasised the importance of safeguarding the bridges? structural integrity.

He said: ?All the piles in Lagos are being held by skin friction. What it means is that it is sand that is holding them; so, if you remove the sand, the piles will start dangling, and it is very dangerous.?

Umahi called for collaboration with the Nigerian Navy for patrol on waterway and prevent illegal sand filling and dredging near bridges. (NAN)

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