Thursday at 12:00 am was the official opening of the bridge.
Babatunde Fashola, the minister of works and housing, gave the order at the opening of the bridge on Wednesday. He said that the bridge will be open for one month during the holiday season.
He said that people would not be able to drive over the bridge after January 15, 2023.
The minister asked drivers who use the bridge to do so in a safe and responsible way so that the project's goal wouldn't be defeated.
The project will be open to traffic on December 15, 2022, the federal government said last week.
Fashola said at the opening ceremony that President Muhammadu Buhari's goal in building the bridge was to save lives and help people get out of poverty because of hours wasted in traffic on the old First Niger Bridge.
He said that the opening of the Second Niger Bridge would make it easier for people to get to work during the holidays, when traffic is always bad.
"Many people have talked about a solution, but the administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari decided to build the bridge no matter what." "So, wherever the money came from, it came from the US. It came from investment income from our oil assets and the return of some money that had been stolen from Nigeria," Fashola said.
"What we see now is the result." When people talk about poverty, the biggest part is not the lack of money, but the lack of money in many ways.
"Poverty is when it takes you two or three days to cross a bridge when it should only take you a few minutes so you can do more useful things."
"The President agreed that, now that the bridge is done, we should build an access road so that you can start to feel what it would be like to cross the bridge during Christmas."
"On Nigerian roads, the most you can go is 100 km per hour." Don't drive 101 kilometres per hour. The President will be happy if people who use this road do so in a safe and responsible way, especially around Christmas and New Year's. The President hopes you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year.
"From December 15, 2022, to January 15, 2023, it would be open to traffic going from the west to the east.
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"Let me be clear again: we haven't finished building the bridge yet, but we'd let people use it to take pressure off the other bridge." On January 15, 2023, people coming from the east to the west would go the other way."
