Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said phase four of the second Niger Bridge will be completed next month.
The minister, who disclosed this, on Wednesday, in continuation of his ongoing tour of Federal Government projects across the country, declared that the bridge will be ready for use in 2020 and expressed satisfaction at the pace of work on the bridge.
He said: “I am very excited. The thing about this project is that, because of the alignment, people travelling on the old bridge will say nothing is going on because they cannot see it, but you have come here and you can see the amount of work that is going on, so, I am very very excited,” the minister told the journalists who accompanied him on the tour.
Mohammed, who inspected construction work at the Asaba and Onitsha ends of the bridge, said when completed, the bridge will ease traffic congestion on the road as well as change the socio-economic landscape of the South East and South South geo-political zones in particular.
He commended the enthusiasm with which the contractor is handling the project and gave assurances that, henceforth, funding will no longer be a challenge for such projects.
“I think one thing that this government has assured is that funding won’t be a problem because we have many sources of funding and I think the latest is the Presidential Infrastructural Development Fund, which is actually aimed at ensuring no project like this suffers for lack of funding,” the minister said.