6th July, 2015
Kazeem Ugbodaga
Lagos State Government on Sunday indicated plans to reconstruct the popular Ladipo Auto Spare Parts Market Road and other connecting roads to enhance vehicular movement within the axis.
This came to fore when government officials inspected some road networks in the Papa Ajao and Ladipo Spare Parts Market areas in Mushin and Oshodi/Isolo Local Government Areas of the State with a commitment to commence rehabilitation that would make the roads motorable.
Permanent Secretary in the State Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, Mr. Bamgbose-Martins who led the inspection said plans are underway to get the contractor working on the Daleko Road back on site to finish the remaining portions of the road.
“We need to get the contractor back on site, have them fill it up at least so that it becomes motorable”, he said.
Martins who was joined by the General Manager, Lagos State Public Works Corporation, Ayotunde Sodeinde, the Chief Press Secretary, Habib Aruna and other officials of the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, said palliative measures would be applied by the Public Works Corporation on other roads and craters in the Papa Ajao area.
On the state of Ladipo Market Road, he ruled out the option of carrying out palliative work saying that what the road needs is total reconstruction.
“One of the things you would observe here is that the road here is gone, in terms of standard road, it’s gone. It’s not a case for palliative; it’s not a case for patching. This is a case where the road has to be totally reconstructed”.
“In other words, we need to redesign it to fit into the habits and the use that is here. It’s a market. There are rocks here, so it is still motorable, even if it rains, it is motorable. So PWC can’t come here and put asphalt because it’s not going to last. If they put asphalt, the next rain, it will wash off”, he said.
He, however, said the State will list the road in its plan of work for next year as some other roads in the State need urgent attention.
“It is still passable now, but what we need here is a full construction. When we are going to do anything, we are going to redesign it and then we have to reconstruct from the beginning, that’s the situation here, but for now, at least it’s motorable”.
“If we allow Public Works Corporation (PWC) come in here, we would just come and waste resources, but we’ll redesign it. We’ll probably take the option of using concrete pavement, we call it reinforced concrete, rigid pavement and the reason why we consider that is because there’s a market here and what it means is that heavy vehicles will come here, you’re going to have tankers, trailers come in here with heavy axle loading”.
“Some of them would even park here. Any road here that we don’t put in a lasting solution will fail. So this would be one of the things we would begin to look at next year, it’s not going to be an immediate thing, but between now and then we’ll do the design of the road. Even the soil effect is affected, we’ll have to rip it off and do it all over again”.
He cautioned the traders in Ladipo Market area against parking containers and articulated vehicles on the roads, saying the roads are not designed for such heavy stationery load.
“The roads are not designed for trailers to park on them. This is what we saw when we went to Apapa. You have trailers parking on the Bridges permanently and that’s what you call static loading, it’s not designed for that. The bridge won’t collapse, but overtime, there’ll be fatigue. The same thing that can happen to the bridge, can also happen to the roads”, he said.