The Federal Government has given motorists and other road users two weeks to improve compliance with safety regulations on the Lagos section of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway or face its closure.
The Federal Controller of Works in Lagos State, Olufemi Dare, issued the ultimatum on Monday during an inspection of the ongoing highway project.
Dare said the directive followed concerns over reckless driving, vandalism, illegal activities and other safety violations along the route.
He said the highway was still under construction and should not ordinarily have been opened to traffic before the completion of its bridges.
“Within two weeks, if there’s no improvement on all these issues, then we have no option than to come back and shutdown this road,” Dare said.
The controller said the government had the Lekki-Epe Expressway as an alternative route if the coastal highway was shut.
He said motorists were required to observe a speed limit of 30km per hour on the highway but expressed concern that some drivers were travelling at speeds as high as 120km per hour despite ongoing construction work.
“People who come to coastal road and get to a speed of 120 kilometres per hour on the coastal road, and where constructions are going on, bridges, construction are going on,” he said.
“We have said your speed on the coastal road must not be more than 30 kilometres per hour.”
Dare said lives were being lost on the highway “almost every other day”, stressing that the government could no longer tolerate the situation.
The Lagos section of the coastal highway consists of two sections covering about 103km. Section One spans about 47km, while Section Two covers approximately 56km.
According to Dare, there are 20 major bridges across the two sections, with 10 in each section, several of which are still under construction.
He also warned articulated vehicle operators against parking their trucks and trailers along the highway, while illegal U-turns would attract prosecution.
Okada motorcycles, tricycles, hawking and animal grazing have also been banned along the route, he said.
“We don’t want Okada motorcycles, tricycles. We don’t want them on the coastal road,” Dare said.
The controller said the government had secured increased police deployment along the highway following meetings between the Minister of Works, David Umahi, and the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Tijani.
“Beginning from this morning, we’ve started to see the improvement in deployment of police. And we are going to have more,” he said.
Dare identified vandalism of safety infrastructure as another major challenge, saying about five kilometres of ClearVu fencing had been removed while approximately 18km of concrete covers had been vandalised and taken away.
“They come in the night, they remove the ClearVu fence that was used to barricade the communities from the coastal highway,” he said.
He said the government was considering replacing the steel fencing with concrete barriers in vulnerable areas, noting that concrete structures had proved more difficult for vandals to remove.
“We have to change the strategy,” he said. “In areas where we have block work today, we do not have any problem with them.”
Dare added that the government was working towards deploying CCTV cameras along the route to strengthen surveillance.
He also disclosed that 40 members of a coastal guard had been approved for the first section of the highway, with four to be selected from each community along the route.
The guards, he said, would work with the police and provide community-level surveillance, while additional personnel would be recruited for the second section.
Dare said some previously engaged coastal guards had been attacked by vandals, making stronger police protection necessary.
He added that the government planned to reorganise and train the coastal guards under the direct supervision of the Lagos State Police Command.
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