Repair This Road, Please

Motorists and commuters appeal to Federal Government as they groan daily in gridlock at Abule-Egba on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway

The importance of roads to the socio-economic development of any nation can never be over-emphasised, especially in a country like Nigeria where transportation business is road-driven.

The railway sector has been comatose for a very long time now and air transportation, as one aviation minister once put it, is not for the poor. This means, therefore, that the bulk of the transportation activities in this country is carried out through the roads.

It is disheartening, therefore, that this sector, which should have elicited priority attention has been persistently neglected by successive governments. Examples of this abound all over the country. The Benin-Lagos Road has been in a dilapidated state despite the whopping N300 billion appropriated for it during the President Olusegun Obasanjo regime. The bad state of roads or their absence in the Niger-Delta was one of the reasons for the militancy in the region, which nearly brought the nation’s economy to its knees.

Close home here at Ota in Ogun State, those plying the Lagos-Abeokuta Road were for a long time subjected to a harrowing experience when work on the road at Sango Ota was abandoned for a long time. The road was then riddled with gullies which could accommodate a lorry.

Down here in Lagos, the condition of the Federal Government roads is assuming an alarming dimension.

The experience of motorists and commuters on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway in the past three months at Abule-Egba has been very harrowing. A spot on the road at Abule-Egba has become so dilapidated that passing there now is like the proverbial camel’s head passing through the eye of the needle. The road has almost been cut into two, creating a bottleneck which hinders smooth flow of traffic.

Consequently, a permanent gridlock is experienced on the road right from Ahmadiyya Bus Stop. It has become so bad that one could be at the traffic jam for about two hours. To avoid the delay, most motorists, especially those going to Agege veer off to take alternative routes and in the process, they run into situations which, most often, are worse as they get stuck in more severe hold-ups. At the end of the day, a worker who left home as early as 6 a.m in order to resume at his or her work place at 8 am ends up getting to office at 10 O’clock.

Motorists and commuters who spoke with P.M.NEWS on the state of the road expressed disappointment over the nonchalant attitude of the Federal Government through its road maintenance agency, FERMA, to their daily ordeal on the road. They expressed serious worry that the situation will be worse when heavy rains come. They called on the government to urgently repair the bad spot at Abule-Egba before the road is cut into two.

A regular commuter on the road who spoke with P.M.NEWS, Mr. Johnson Oshionebo, expressed regret that the portion of the road at Abule-Egba has been in that condition for more than three months now without the government doing anything about it.

“When you consider the contribution of Lagos to the nation’s economy and the man-hour lost on this road daily, you could then imagine what the country loses to this particular spot everyday. What about the wear and tear on the road users, arising from stress and the vehicles, some of which have caught fire while being stuck in the hold-up?

“When a worker or anybody, for that matter, has been so stressed up in a hold-up while on his way to office, how do you expect him to think well and, even, give his best on his job? Productivity suffers in the circumstance,” he said.

Ikenna Amaechi, a commercial bus driver, expressed mixed feelings over the situation. According to him, “it is a shame that a road is like this in a place like Lagos which is the commercial capital of Nigeria and the government does not care. A lot of things frustrate people in this country. I took up this job after graduating from the varsity and staying at home for three years without a job. Now, the situation of this road has reduced my daily earnings.

“Some of my colleagues have cleverly increased their fares by breaking the journey. I will do same from next week if the situation does not improve. After all, I must feed my family and maintain the vehicle,” he stated.

Another commuter who simply gave her name as Kemi, a residence of Alakuko, said: “Since the transportation crisis at Abule-Egba began, I have been paying more than the normal fare to my office at Alausa Secretariat. The drivers first take N50 from Alakuko to Ijaiye, after which they take N100 or N120 to Agege. From there, depending on if I am getting late to office, I take okada for N200 to Alausa.”

“The government should, please, do something about this road before the rains come fully,” she concluded.

Kehinde Olojojo, another commuter, called on the Federal Government to quickly attend to the bad spot at Abule-Egba since it is on a Federal Government road, saying; “After all, that is one immediate way President Goodluck Jonathan can show appreciation to Lagosians for the overwhelming votes they gave to him in the recent presidential election.” He recalled the many lives that were wasted at Ikeja bus stop on the same road because the Federal Government whose responsibility the road is refused to build a pedestrian bridge to prevent people from running across road there. This continued until the ever caring government of Lagos State built the bridge there.

Olojojo, therefore, called on President Jonathan, as a new breed politician, to effect a change in the attidude of government to a situation whereby infrastructure, especially roads with little faults, are often left to get to a level where they become difficult to repair and/or begin to claim lives.

The above reactions summarise the views of the many commuters and motorists who spoke on this subject.

The Federal Government is, therefore, implored to, as a matter of urgency, order FERMA to mobilise to that spot at Abule-Egba and effect repairs on it, and of course, all other bad portions of its roads in Lagos, before heavy rains set in. “A stitch in time,” they say, “saves nine.”

—William Igenegbai