Despite successive administrations making quality road infrastructure development a significant part of their campaign promises every election year, commuting on Nigeria’s federal roads is still largely a nightmare.
And though not less than N1.12 trillion has been allocated for this all-important facility in the past five years, the tales of woes from commuters plying those roads across the nation are still an embarrassment to a nation that prides itself on being the largest economy on the African continent.
Many of these roads have been left in a state of disrepair for many years.
Kogi
The Okene-Lokoja-Abuja road has become a hotbed for criminal activities owing to its deplorable condition, which forces motorists to slow down.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo awarded the road when he was in office, and it was expected to be dualised from Abuja to Lokoja. Works commenced on it for some years, but it had been abandoned by the contractor.
The Kabba-Isanlu-Egbe-Ilorin road contract was also awarded by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. The Nigerian Tribune gathered that the contract for the road is in three phases, but the contractor only started the road from Kabba down to Ayetoro-Gbede, about 30 kilometers…before the project got stuck.
Ganaja-Ajaokuta road is another federal road in the state. Some concerned people have expressed worries over the delay in the ongoing construction of the 7km Ganaja Junction to Ganaja Village road.
Some respondents believe the delay and poor quality of work done so far have led to frequent loss of lives along the road.
Few weeks ago, residents of the communities on the route threatened to embark on a mass protest to demand revocation of the road contract allegedly awarded to about four different contractors.
They had to sheathe their swords following an appeal by the Controller of Works and Housing, who promised an improvement.
Nigerian Tribune gathered that on receipt of the threat letter from the Ganaja community, a suburb of Lokoja metropolis, the Federal Controller of Works in Kogi, Jimoh Kajogbola, hurriedly convened a meeting of stakeholders where he appealed to the communities not to embark on protest.
The Iyara-Omuo-Ekiti road has been abandoned for several years, and it has virtually become a death trap for motorists. Kidnappers and armed robbers now use the opportunity to either kidnap or rob people plying the road.
All efforts to speak with the Federal Controller of Works in Kogi State, Jimoh Kajogbola, were unsuccessful as he was said to have travelled out of town.
Calls to his phone lines did not connect, but a senior official who agreed to speak, albeit anonymously, said they had approached the Federal Ministry of Works for the completion of federal roads in the state but government had “not shown any serious commitment.”
Ogun and Lagos
Ogun, the Gateway State, probably has the highest number of federal government roads in the country, including the Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta highway; Lagos-Ibadan Expressway; Ota-Idiroko highway; Atan-Lusada-Agbara highway; Sagamu-Ogijo-Ikorodu highway; Papalanto- Sagamu; Sagamu-Benin Expressway; Ibadan-Abeokuta highway; Abeokuta -Sagamu and Sango-Ijoko road.
But the story is not different here, as motorists literally groan commuting through them on a daily basis.
The condition of the Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta highway recently sparked a protest organised by the Ogun State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) led by the state Chairman, Comrade Emmanuel Bankole, and residents of Sango-Ota.
However, the Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, said that the Federal Government would source for N56 billion to fix it, saying that non-availability of resources had been responsible for deficit infrastructure across the country.
He assured that some terrible portions on the road would be reconstructed with N13.6 billion out of the N56 billion before December.
The Abeokuta-Ibadan road had been receiving attention, but it is said to have been abandoned by the contractor handling the project.
This is probably one of the oldest federal government roads in the country, but it still largely maintains a single lane.
Residents of Ogun and Oyo have threatened to block the highway if the rehabilitation work is not completed on time, and equally demanded that the road be dualised considering the number of vehicles plying it on a daily basis.
Another Federal Government road begging for attention is the Sagamu-Ogijo-Ikorodu highway. This road linking Ogun to Lagos State is in a sorry state. It has practically become impassable with no visible work being carried out on it.
It is the same scenario with the Papalanto-Sagamu interchange highway. However, Dangote Group is reported to have shown interest in reconstructing it on behalf of the federal government, on a tax credit basis.
Discussions are said to be on with the chairman of the Mike Adenuga Group, Otunba Mike Adenuga Jnr, to fix the Sango-Idiroko road.
The heavy rains in the last one week have further exposed the deplorable conditions of Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta road; Ota-Idi-Iroko road; Lagos-Badagry Road and Ikorodu-Shagamu road in Lagos and Ogun states.
Apart from the deep holes on the highways due to lack of maintenance, the roads were overtaken by flood, making them almost impassable for residents and motorists in the area.
When the Nigerian Tribune visited the area, the entire stretch of the road from Sango-Ota, Ijoko, Oju-Ore, Joju and their environs were horribly bad and flooded.
Due to the bad road, transport fares from Sango-Ota to Abule-Egba, Iyana-Ipaja, Oshodi were increased by commercial bus drivers, while street hawkers took advantage of the situation to make brisk business from motorists.
Also, commercial bike (okada) operators and vehicle drivers threw caution to the wind in the corridor, driving one-way, thereby compounding the traffic situation in the area.
According to another resident, Dada Davidson, many spend hours in traffic going through this route daily due to its dilapidated nature.
He said that the journey through the expressway had suddenly become a nightmare anytime it rained.
“The road has collapsed to the extent that commuters spend hours before getting to their respective offices and homes on a daily basis.
“Most of the time, commercial bus drivers and motorcyclists drive one-way most of the time,” he said.
On the Lagos-Badagry expressway, residents of Badagry communities have continued to groan over the poor condition of the road and slow paced construction works of the 46km Agbara-Seme section of the Badagry express road.
Residents of these communities decry the slow pace of work on the road, as the contractor keeps mobilizing to site in phases.
When contacted on why the Agbara-Seme section of the Badagry express road construction is so slow, an engineer who refused to mention his name explained that funding was the major reason behind the delay.
“The construction work is slow because of the funding issue. The contractor is not entirely to be blamed because when you get N4 billion out of a possible N63.2 billion, you don’t expect the contractor to perform magic since he will only be working with the kind of money that has been made available to him.
“The minister is putting efforts to ensure that the whole money is available for the contractor, but at times, these things don’t work the way we expect it to work,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Ogun State government has announced that it will commence palliative works on the failed portions of Sango-Ota-Joju road on Monday, to ease the agony motorists and residents in the area.
According to a statement on Sunday by Kunle Somorin, the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Dapo Abiodun, engineers have been given instruction to begin work on the road.
The statement added that the discomfort caused by the bad condition of the road had made it extremely important to immediately put in place the palliative measures.
Somorin said the palliative roadworks, which will run concurrently with the ongoing rehabilitation work on Sango Ota-Idiroko road.
Ekiti
Nearly all the federal roads in Ekiti State are in deplorable condition. The development has led to series of avoidable accidents, and now kidnappers are taking advantage of the failed portions to pounce on travellers.
These roads include the Ado Ekiti-Akure road, Ado Ekiti-Ikare road, Ado-Aramoko-Itawure road, Ado-Ifaki–Ido Ekiti road and Ifaki–Oye Ekiti–Ikole– Omuo road. Others are Omuo–Kabba road stretching to some local councils in Kogi, Omuo-Oke road and Agbe–Ikare road, which have been abandoned for years.
The condition of these roads has been a source of worry to residents who repeatedly witness accidents that claim several lives.
Aside from accidents, passengers are made to pay high fares because motorists claim they spend more money to maintain their vehicles due to the state of the roads.
The Federal Executive Council had in 2019 approved the rehabilitation of the 36-kilometre Ado-Ekiti–Igede-Aramoko-Itawure road for about N14 billion. The Minister of Works, Babatunde Fashola, in a statement said the contract which was awarded to Messrs Deux Projects Limited/Hitech Construction Company Limited was expected to be completed in 30 months.
A check by the Nigerian Tribune on the road, however, revealed that motorists are having tough time navigating the many failed portions along the road, which have resulted in many accidents and people getting kidnapped on many occasions.
Also, the dualization of Ado-Ekiti-Akure road, which was approved in early 2020 by the federal government to Dantata & Sawoe contracting firm for N22 billion, has been abandoned.
It is on record that many abductions which took place on the road happened at the failed portions where vehicles have to slow down to navigate the road.
When contacted, the Federal Controller of Works for Ekiti State, Mr Ishaq Lawal, noted that most of the roads in the state have been awarded to contractors and that the office is expecting the contractors to report for work.
Osun
In Osun State, federal roads that are in dire need of attention are Obokun road, Ojutu bridge, Osogbo/Ilobu-Ogbomoso road, Ilesa-Osogbo road, Osogbo-Iwo road, Ife-Ilesha-Iwaraja, Osu-International breweries road in Ilesha, Ilesha to Ekiti along Ijebu Ijesha road.
The Ibadan-Lagere-Ilesa bypass in Osun State is yet to be revisited since it was abandoned by the engineers and workers on site, while the Ila-Orangun to Oyin-Adunni/Oyin-Aiyadun road in Ifedayo Local Government Area of the state is also in a sorry state.
Travellers, for days last week, practically got trapped on the Ilesa-Akure expressway owing to the bad condition of the road, as a section of the road had been cut off from the other.
Speaking on the state of the roads, the Orisa of Orisunbare Community, Chief Bayo Fagbohunm, appealed to the Federal Government to fix the Ilesa/Akure expressway which he said is currently in shambles.
He said, “The road has been bad for a very long time and nothing has been about it, but now a section of the road has been cut off from the other. Both sides of the road are no longer motorable. As a result, trailers and other vehicles instead of passing through the express started going through the town. The new road just constructed by Governor Oyetola is being damaged.
“We just feel like we cannot continue because for 13 years we suffered bad road. We decided to bar all the trailers from passing through that road. For as long as the federal government refuses to repair the road, we won’t allow trailers to go into the town.”
Ondo
In Ondo State, the deplorable conditions of the roads have been a great challenge for road users, with a journey of less than an hour taking over two hours.
Some of the roads have been washed away by rain and hoodlums have turned the bad spots to their traps in kidnapping travellers on a daily basis.
In the last one year, criminal herdsmen have operated on the roads almost on a daily basis to perpetrate their heinous activities unhindered.
Apart from the activities of the hoodlums, road crashes have claimed lives as a result of the impassable conditions of the affected roads.
Some of the affected roads include Akure-Owo expressway, Owo-Benin Expressway, Ikare –Ikaram Akoko-Ajowa Road, Oka Akoko –Epinmi Road, Ipele-Ido Ani –Isua Akoko Road, Akure-Ado Ekiti road, among others.
Some motorists who spoke with our reporter called on the Federal Government to find a lasting solution to this problem and fix all these roads, saying a state of emergency should be declared on all federal roads.
A motorist, Mr Peter Aderanti, blamed both the federal and state governments as well as the state and federal lawmakers from Ondo State for being insensitive to the plight of the people, saying all the roads have been abandoned.
He said, “We are appealing now to both Ondo and federal governments to come to our aid in order to fix these roads. We don’t ask for money from them, but they should come and fix these bad roads for the benefit of all of us.”
Another driver, Israel Ajayi, said: “The government says it wants to fight insecurity and when you have a road that is as bad as what we have on the Ido-Ani-Isua Akoko road, how would you fight insecurity?”
“We are appealing to the Federal Government to fix the roads for us. It has got to the point that when you want to travel on Nigerian roads, you need prayers for God’s protection against bandits and accidents, which are mainly aided by bad roads.”
When contacted, the Federal Controller of Works and Housing, Akure, Olubakinde Olajide, declined comments, saying he could not speak on the matter without the permission of his superiors in Abuja.
Oyo
Federal roads in Oyo State have become death traps, as few of the roads have almost collapsed.
Some of the bad portions of the federal roads visited by our correspondent include Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa expressway, Ibadan-Oki-Iwo road, Ibadan-Oyo expressway and Ido-Eruwa road.
A commercial bus driver who plies Ibadan to Ilesa road, Mr Rasheed Ojuolape, said “Government should come to our aid on Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa expressway. There are many bad portions on the expressway, and this has always caused drivers to spend so much on vehicle maintenance.
“Between Asejire and Ikire, a large portion of the road is very bad and this often causes traffic jam as the bad lane had been closed to traffic, forcing drivers to make use of a single lane.”
Meanwhile, the popular Asejire bridge between the boundary of Oyo and Osun may collapse if urgent measures are not taken to fix the connecting joints of the bridge, as it often vibrates each time vehicles pass over it.
As of the time of filing this report, efforts to get the reaction of the Federal Controller of Works in Oyo State, Kayode Ibrahim, were unsuccessful as calls put through to his mobile phone did not go through.
The Nnamdi Azikiwe Expressway in Kaduna is a link road to the rest of the country; but the road constructed during the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida is now in deplorable condition.
The road is now riddled with potholes.
Nigerian Tribune investigation revealed that most of the federal roads in Plateau are begging for attention and in deplorable state, thus posing danger to road users.
Some of these roads include Akwanga-Forest Jos road, Shendam-Lafia, Jingre- Saminaka-Pambegua.
Apart from these roads, the bridge in Wase linking Mato-Kuka in Taraba State and Panyam-Shendam have become death traps while undesirable elements such kidnappers, banditry and other people of dubious characters often take advantage of the bad roads to carry out their nefarious activities.
Checks further revealed that Jos-Abuja roads starting from Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau State are begging for attention, while the window dressing and shoddy patching done by FERMA have been washed away.
Recently, Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State inspected a collapsed bridge between Plateau and Taraba State. The collapsed bridge also cut off Langtang and Wase local government areas of the state. He assured the people living in the area that his administration would not abandon them.
“Though this is a federal road, we have to immediately intervene in order to ameliorate the suffering of the people since this road is a major commercial corridor in this area. This is one of the roads that I submitted to the President for Federal Government intervention which has been approved,” he said.
A source in FERMA who spoke with the Nigerian Tribune said the federal roads had been awarded several times without fund to back up such award.
Bauchi
Road users in Bauchi State plying the Bauchi-Gombe road, particularly the 60 kilometers portion between Bauchi and Alkaleri, have been lamenting. Though FERMA started working on it, the road has been abandoned. The portion close to the Dindima bridge particularly has remained unattended to for a long time.
Any day it rains, it takes several hours for motorists to be able to pass through as the road is always flooded, particularly the portion in Bara and Alkaleri. The same thing goes for a portion along Bauchi-Jos road, particularly Rijiyan Malam and Womi villages, where many lives have been lost.
In Nabordo village, a portion of the road has caved in, same as the Bauchi-Kano road where a bridge recently collapsed leading to loss of lives.
In 2020, following a ghastly accident on the Bauchi-Alkaleri portion of the road, Bauchi State governor, Sen Bala Mohammed Abdulkadir, promised to fix the portion in order to reduce carnage on the road. The government is yet to fulfill that promise.
Though the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) is claiming that it has so far rehabilitated about 137 kilometers of federal roads in the state within the last ten months, most of the federal roads in the state have remained dilapidated.
Kano
It’s the same story in Kano, as most federal roads are begging for repairs, while some have become impassable.
Amongst these roads are those leading from the ancient city of Kano to Gwarzo, Karaye as well as from Kano towards Jigawa and Bauchi states.
Others are Kano-Kaduna, Gaya-Dutse, and Kano-Katsina (on which palliative work is currently going on).
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