30th September, 2021
Acting General Manager, Lagos State Infrastructure Maintenance and Regulatory Agency (LASIMRA), Mrs Bisoye Coker-Odusote on Thursday said the Unified Duct Infrastructure Project (UDIP) embarked on by the government would be completed before the end of the year.
The UDIP project is a six-way infrastructure system meant to improve the connectivity of internet access in schools, hospitals, public institutions, government offices, commercial and residential homes.
Coker-Odusote spoke on Thursday at a news conference to herald the agency’s Stakeholders Conference scheduled for Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos on Tuesday, October 5, 2021,with the theme: “Lagos State Metro/Smart City Initiative – The Future of Technological Infrastructure.”
She said the UDIP project kicked off last year, but that the COVID-19 pandemic and the EndSARS protest created a setback for the project.
“You could remember that Lagos State introduced temporary ban and movement restriction and that slowed down the progress of the job and the EndSARS protest where lots of damages were done to the infrastructures of the state. But as we speak, the pace has peaked a lot quicker and we are hoping that we will be able to complete the UDIP project very soon.
“It should be completed before the end of this year. The UDIP project is related to the fibre connectivity optic. We don’t have at the moment a holistic system that will supply connectivity to your homes. What you have right now is various operators going to individuals to sell data access.
“What we want is to create a system that will make it very easy and increase the capacity of the supply of all internet access to your homes and various commercial facilities or institutions or businesses. It is a unified duct infrastructure project where we are able to lay down the foundation for the metro platform to run effectively,” Coker-Odusote explained.
On its forthcoming stakeholders conference, the LASIMRA boss said the conference would be looking at the processes involved in the implementation of a Smart City and the different phases of the Smart City project that the state has embarked on.
She said the conference would also dwell on the challenges inherent in a Smart City project and what the plans were to overcome these challenges, as well as how to move Nigeria from the first phase of a Smart City project to the front runner stage and how to “move from where we are to where Singapore is at the moment.”
She explained that the second part of the conference would discuss financing critical input of the Lagos Smart City project and looking inward.
“This is focusing on the issues of challenges that we have experienced in terms of financing. We have EndSARS and COVID-19 pandemic last year which we thank God is under control now in Lagos State and we want to see how this has impacted the financial investment for the project and ways of how we can overcome these challenges,” she added.
On LASIMRA’s auto-online platform, Coker-Odusote said the agency decided to adopt the e-governance system for efficient purposes.
“What we are trying to do is to try and create an avenue where you can always apply for a permit with ease. One of the challenges I face when I got here was that I had lots of operators complaining about the time it takes to process their applications and I was shocked to hear that it will take operators six months to get a permit and sometimes a year or two.
“We had to go inward and review our processes and cut down on the time application. We adopted it by creating a database platform where we can process permits online following simple steps and reduce the time frame. So far, it has been a huge success, we are now able to process our permits within 48 hours. In most cases you can get your permit before 48 hours, it shows a lot of accountability, transparency and improves the efficiency of the organization on what we are trying to do,” she explained.
She also disclosed that one of the biggest challenges faced by the agency was operators carrying out illegal activities, without obtaining the needed licenses and permits.
Coker-Odusote lamented that some operators cut corners and that when such were apprehended, the government would sit with them in a bit to enlighten them on why they must follow due process and the penalties involved when such processes were breached.