Outrage, yesterday greeted the Federal Government’s proposal to charge N3,000 on average per toll gate when the Lagos-Calabar coastal road is completed.
Minister of Works, Senator Dave Umahi, confirmed the figure, yesterday when he was featured on a programme on Channels Television.
Among those who kicked against the move and other details of the road, yesterday were the 2023 presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar; the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC; the Labour Party, LP; Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP; the Pan-Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF; and transport operators, among others.
Umahi said: “Let me leave out the infrastructure along the corridor. Let me just concentrate on the tolls and I put 50,000 vehicles as an average passage on these toll points per day,” Umahi said on the breakfast show.
“I put N3,000 as an average cost. N3,000 because the cars could be like N1,500, and the big trucks could be like N5,000. “So, we put an average. In 15 years, you make back the money,” he said, dismissing calls that the cost budgeted for the road was high.
According to him, there will be security at the toll gates and some facilities like filling stations.
“At every point of tolling, we also have toll station where we have a kind of relief activities — restaurants, filling stations, parking lots, and so on and so forth. So, people will now have confidence. In these sections, we intend to put CCTV all through,” Umahi said.
