Third Mainland Bridge Is Safe – FG

Third Mainland Bridge

The Minister of Works, Mr. Mike Onolememen, has declared the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos as safe, just as the Senate Committee on Works opened an investigative hearing on the integrity of the bridge. The investigative hearing arose from a motion brought by Senator Gbenga Ashafa representing Lagos East constituency last week, raising the alarm over the imminent failure of the bridge.
Ashafa had relied on a report of a company, which reportedly carried out an inspection of the underwater structures of the bridge and suggested that it could collapse soon if nothing was done about it.
While appearing before the committee on Monday, Onolememen said the experts whose report Ashafa relied on did not have the competence to reach such conclusions.
He explained that the ministry had contracted Nigerian Submarine Divers Limited in 2010 to undertake an inspection of the Third Mainland and Eko bridges in Lagos in order to ascertain the state of the underwater structural elements.
The minister said an initial report of the underwater inspection presented by NSD in July 2011 showed alarming deterioration and serious damage to numerous piles of the Third Mainland Bridge.
“The final report submitted by NSD in November 2011 indicated extensive deterioration of embedded steel reinforcement in piles, concrete degradation and appreciation loss of concrete material as well as discontinuities in some foundation piles, which had apparently affected the load bearing capacity of the piles,” Onolememen said.
He added that after reviewing the final report by the company, it was observed that not all piles were inspected due to various reasons such as obstruction by human activities and inaccessibility, but the ministry insisted that all piles, whether underwater or on land, must be investigated in line with the contract.
Onolememen said, “The findings of Messrs Nigerian Submarine Divers Limited were strictly based on visual inspection and underwater photos. For this reason, and following meetings between officials of the ministry, Messrs NSD, Julius Berger and Borini Prono, it was decided that an advanced integrity assessment, including high technology and chemical analysis of concrete samples from piles was inevitable, and in order to authenticate the findings of NSD as contained in their reports.
“Moreover, since Messrs NSD Limited is not a civil engineering consultancy firm, its capacity and professional competence to carry out such works was doubtful.”
The minister also told the committee that a bill of N33bn was submitted by a consultant to his office as what would be required to do some immediate repairs on the bridge, but he turned it down because he adjudged it to be unrealistic.
He said, “Of course, that memo came to me and I refused to approve it; instead, I now want the entire pile by pile investigation to be carried out so that we know exactly what to do.
“After all, the most critical sections of the bridge, the first two sections where we need to carry out immediate repair, from information available to me by people who did the test, we will not need more than N5bn to carry out these repairs.”
According to him, an advanced integrity assessment contract was awarded to Messrs Borini Prono and Company, which brought a report showing that the visual underwater inspection, the non-destructive tests and coring campaign carried out on the Third Mainland Bridge confirmed the adequacy of pile concrete quality.