Prpetua Egesimba
Gbagada-Ifako residents, a suburb of Lagos were recently given a lifeline by the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, which constructed multiple projects, including a link bridge on Oduwaiye Street, Gbagada, traffic lights on a number of streets and a 600 capacity multilevel car park to ease human and vehicular movements in the area.
The projects, all built from the contributions of members of the church across the country was commissioned by the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode on February 27.
The Project Manager, Ifeanyi Emmanuel Okoye, said the project was a corporate social responsibility of the church to the community.
“So the projects, including the bridge, car park and traffic lights were corporate social responsibility of the church. The projects have been designed in such a way that they synchronized with the bridge in order to help the traffic flow.
“The idea is that the traffic flow must be such that we do not have hold ups or any challenge basically. And also not to endanger the lives of the residents or inconvenient the community especially when we are having service.”
Describing how residents and commuters accepted the projects, he said they were very happy and excited, adding that the day it was commissioned, there was a crowd of people, including pedestrians commending the church for such laudable idea.
“They were really glad about what has been done. The bridge is 140 meters in length. It was constructed by Julius Beger. The car park is a 600 capacity car park.
“Currently, more access roads are being done by the church. Members of the community are delighted about the projects,” he stated.
Giving more insight about the project, the Project Architect, Pastor Kayode Dada, explained that Oduwaiye Street where the bridge is located was valley-like land, adding that the church seized that opportunity to fly a bridged across.
He reiterated that the reason was to enable worshippers easy access under the bridge while the community can also easily use the bridge.
“Why we also did that was to also control and minimize both human and vehicular traffic in the area. We have noticed that pedestrian traffic is even more dangerous so to say in movement. And especially now that we are having a lot of worshippers, we felt that the best thing was to take the worshippers completely out of the road, so that there won’t be any pain for motorists in the area. Once that one is tackled, it is going to minimize anticipated vehicular traffic.”
He said the church also commissioned multi-leveled car parks. According to him, the reason is to accommodate enough cars. Levels one to three, he said, are for cars while level four is dedicated totally for buses. He said the church has already procured 50 buses and will still get more.
“On the bus park, we are accommodating 76 buses. Like I said, we are getting more buses to accommodate quite a number of people to reduce the number of cars coming in.
“We also commissioned the traffic lights all around here. The traffic light is to control and direct traffic, to have orgainsed system.”
Pastor Dada noted that the church went into the projects to make sure that there is sanity around the area , adding that in the past, there were lots of logjam.
The state government, he said, assisted the church not financially but in approving the concept of the project.
He reiterated that the church worked together with the various agencies and ministries to get the bridge and the car parks done.
“I will say that every member of the church contributed a little to get this done. So financially, it was done by the church.
“In terms of getting the work done, we express our gratitude to the ministries of infrastructure, environment, physical planning,
transportation, works and infrastructure. We thanked even the LASMA for the awareness in directing traffic on the construction of work.”
A resident, Agatha Olubumi expressed happiness saying, many of the roads in the area were bad and whenever there was a church activity, many cars parked along the roads affecting the flow of movement and traffic in the area and constituting nuisance.
She said the construction has brought sanity back in the community, commending the efforts of the church for embarking on it to alleviate the pains of the members of the community.