A company owned by the chairman of the defunct Police Equipment Fund (PEF), Kenny Martins, named: Advance Engineering Company (AEC) Network Ltd., has won the concession to construct the proposed 470km concrete-built Abuja-Lagos Greenfield superhighway on a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement.
The Minister of Works, David Umahi, disclosed this in an interview with newsmen in Lagos at the weekend.
According to him, the highway shall be completed in four years, and will last for 100 years. He said the road will be built by a private sector consortium at no cost to the government, adding that AEC will operate the facility for a yet-to-be-determined period on a BOT deal.
The Minister further said the facility would be tolled at different points to enable the investors recover their investment and praised AEC, saying he was satisfied with their concept and “what they have put in place”.
Umahi assured Nigerians that the four-and-a-half-hour travel-time for vehicles plying the route at 100 kilometres per hour was achievable. He stated that President Bola Tinubu had approved that the project should be fast-tracked, and that the contractor should be on site within three months.
The Minister further explained that from Lagos, the road would pass through eight States in the South-West and North-Central zones before it gets to Abuja. The States are Kogi, Ekiti, Oyo, FCT, Lagos, Ogun, Niger and Kwara.
He added that plans were underway to make the road a business and industrial corridor, with hotels, factories, and housing estates among others, on the route.
