Six years after, the Federal Government (FG) said it has secured approval to commence the $22.7million Lagos-Abidjan trans-national road project.

In February 2018 the Grant Retrocession Agreement between Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member states and the African Development Bank (AfDB) for the commencement of the project was signed.

The agreement included contracts for the feasibility, environmental, socio-economic and detailed engineering designs of the project.

The approximately 1,080 km six-lane Abidjan-Lagos corridor is expected to connect some of the largest and economically dynamic cities in Africa and also link vibrant seaports which served landlocked countries of the region.

At the 12th steering committee and experts meeting for Abidjan-Lagos corridor highway development programme held at the weekend in Lome, Togo, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, disclosed that the FG approved the commencement of works on road section linking Seme Border with the Republic of Benin.

Fashola, who doubled as Chairman of the Committee said the construction will be made flexible to improve service to commuters while making it adaptable to the results of the feasibility and technical studies.

The Minister stated that the current administration’s commitment towards the project has not changed despite the change in the government that initiated the project.

“while the personnel of Presidents and Ministers who launched this initiative have changed, the commitment to the project has not changed.

“From a period between 2013 – 2016 when no meetings were held because of changes in Government and personnel, we have now put in place a system where meetings are held Quarterly,” he said.

He said the quarterly meeting has yielded success as; “this has enabled us to overcome the problems of signing treaties and loan agreements which dragged for a while but which happily have now been completed.

“Feasibility, technical, financial and related contracts which seemed so far from conclusion have now been signed.”

The benefitting cities for the trans-national project are Lagos, Accra in Ghana, Lomé in Togo, Cotonou in the Benin Republic and Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire. (Tribune)

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