ABUJA-LAGOS SUPER HIGHWAY PRELIMINARY WORKS TO BEGIN IN 2024

Senator Dave Umahi MON
Works Minister

"The Lagos-Abuja superhighway will be tolled to enable the investors to recoup their investment. Accordingly plans are underway to make the road a business and industrial corridor with hotels, factories and housing estates, among others, on the route." Umahi.

Preliminary works on the proposed Abuja-Lagos Superhighway is scheduled to begin in the year 2024 with a total sum of N500 million allocated to the project in the proposed budget for 2024.

This much was revealed from the proposed documents with regards to the construction works that is before the National Assembly, awaiting a formal approval.

The document, apart from the highway marked ERGP12211937, reveals further that the Lagos-Port Harcourt coastal highway will also get an allocation of N500 million if the lawmakers do not tinker with the proposed figures.

Works Minister, Engr David Umahi, it is recalled, had declared earlier in the month of September, that the proposed 470 kilometres Abuja-Lagos Greenfield superhighway will be completed in 2027 and had given assurances that super highway, when completed, will last for nothing less than 100 years.

In addition, the Honourable Minister had further said that the highway, which will pass through Lagos state, Oyo, Kogi, Ekiti, Ogun, Niger, Kwara and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), will be built by a private sector consortium at no cost to the federal government.

"The superhighway will be tolled to enable the investors to recoup their investment." Umahi stressed.

"Accordingly, plans were underway to make the road a business and industrial corridor with hotels, factories and housing estates, among others, on the route."

Speaking on the possibilities of the consortium opting out, Umahi warned that if the consortium backed out unreasonably, it may have to pay a fine of $10 million. 

At the moment, Nigerians spend about 14 hours to get to Lagos from Abuja but going by projections, commuters will no longer spend that much again on travelling on that route.

Senator Umahi assured that with the completion of the super highway, "commuters will spend less than five hours on the superhighway when it becomes operational in the next four years."