Candidate of the Labour Party, LP, in the 2023 Lagos governorship poll, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has criticised the Federal Government for shutting down the Independence Bridge in Lagos, saying it was badly thought out.

This is coming after Lagosians, due to the bridge’s closure, experienced hours of gridlock on alternative routes between April 1 and 2.

Although the federal government has ordered that the bridge be reopened to ease movement, Rhodes-Vivour questioned the planning and execution behind the bridge’s closure.

Speaking on the Morning Show, an Arise TV programme, the architect also faulted Lagos State’s urban planning model, saying there was a need for improvement.

He urged the state government to improve connectivity, adding that the gridlock was a reflection of the failure of the state’s multimodal transportation system.

His words: “As a government, if I feel that I am going to repair this bridge, it completely determines everything about planning and execution. It determines the contractor that gets the job. It determines the timing with which it will be done.

“When are you going to do it? What is the best time to do it to minimise the inconvenience that Lagosians will face? It determines the way you do it. I urge every Nigerian to please Google the Sanyuan Bridge in Beijing. It was done in 43 hours. This was a 1,300-ton project where they dismantled a bridge and put another one in 43 hours.

“And you see the planning behind it. It was done in 2015. I am not talking about new technology that happened last year or this year. I am talking about 2015. It is about the thinking, the consciousness that says we need this type of contractor that can do this job in this amount of time, in this way that minimises inconvenience. So, in terms of scenario planning, this government failed woefully.

“Now, coming out to address the fact afterwards, and saying you are sorry, you take responsibility, that is fine. But look at all the suffering that people dealt with. But it could have been avoided if it was better planned. You could have ensured that this did not have to happen the way it did.

“I feel that a deeper conversation needs to be had, one on the need to improve the urban planning of Lagos, the need to improve the connectivity of Lagos, and the need to provide more housing stock to minimise the amount of movement.

“When people look at this kind of situation where you have this one-way movement that is constantly happening in Lagos, you see that it affects the entire state because you have people coming from Oshodi, you have people coming from Alimosho, all going to different parts on this one axis, as opposed to creating a decentralised Lagos. There are businesses that are thriving in your immediate environment.

“You are also connecting the state better. You are ensuring that we are using water transportation and normalising it. This is a failure in relation to all the talk about the multimodal transport system. Even when you think about the communication, the government should have known that this would have affected the state the way it did. And we should have been talking about this a month, two months before. There should have been better communication.”