If you don’t have business on Island, stay in your house, Sanwo-Olu tells Lagosians

Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has called on Lagosians residing outside Victoria Island to stay home and avoid adding to the already traffic gridlock caused by the closure of the Independence Bridge for repairs.

Residents should reevaluate their travel plans for the coming weeks, Sanwo-Olu told reporters Thursday, following the Independence Bridge (which is headed to Marina) was closed for repairs and now resulting in heavy traffic on the city’s main roads.

The federal government had announced that the bridge would be closed for essential maintenance and rehabilitation works until the end of May 2025.

Reacting to the complaint of the heavy gridlock, the governor urged residents to “think out of the box,” suggesting that those who don’t need to be on the island should avoid unnecessary travel.

“If you don’t have a business to do in Victoria Island in the next two to three weeks, conduct your business via social media, telephone, online meetings and plan ahead so that if you don’t need to come and visit somebody here, please, you don’t have to come,” Sanwo-Olu said.

Sanwo-Olu also advised residents to adjust travel times to ease congestion, saying, “If you don’t have a meeting that needs your physical presence, think out of the box. If you don’t need to come out at 7 o’clock, wait till 10 o’clock, let the people that need to come out at 7 and 10 o’clock come out, you defer your time, two, three hours.”

Sanwo-Olu also compared the situation to the movement restrictions seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and said his appeal was for motorists to be able to plan their journey time and also consider other alternatives to allow ease of traffic.

He also disclosed that the state government was also thinking about building a counterflow to act as an alternate route.

“We’re also thinking of another alternative. Can we do a counterflow from here? We’re looking at that but it also needs a lot of excavation; we’re going to break a lot of things, and we don’t know if that also will be fully effective but we’ll consider that in the next one or two days and see the effect of counterflow, using all of the traffic information that we currently have.”

To address the current traffic crisis, Sanwo-Olu assured Lagosians that the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) would be increasing its presence on the affected routes.

“We’re calling them from other parts of the city so that they can make a presence here. And like what we did in November and December, they’ll work till very late at night.”