In a few short days, Nigeria will mark 63 years of independence. Yet the trouble with our roads drags on.
Come along on this short journey from Benin City in Edo State to Sapele in Delta State, a 64-short kilometre away. It’s a Trunk-A Road, in the exclusive purview of the Federal Government. The states through which the roads pass are not allowed to fix the roads or intervene in any way.
All they can do is plead and complain to the Federal Government.
Expected time of arrival is 52 minutes.
We arrive Ajip Motor Park on Sapele Road in Benin City about 10 o’clock Saturday morning. Buses are lined up going to Warri, Sapele, Ugheli and locations along that route.
Motor park touts rush at us, seeking to know our destination and lead us into the appropriate commercial buses. They will get a tip from the drivers for their effort.
Eventually, we are seated in a Toyota Sienna Bus. The fare today is N4,000. Six weeks ago it was N2,500. We ask why the fare hike and the driver announces that we should thank our stars for his kindness.
The roads are so bad and the queues so long that he has a mind to demand N5,000 for the trip.
At 10.23am, all eight passengers are seated in the bus and the journey begins.
A few metres into the trip, the driver swerves into a petrol station and buys N10,000 worth of petrol. He announces he had earlier bought N7,000 worth but needs to make assurance double sure, as the roads are bad and the queues long.
He laments that sustaining his family gets harder every day because the bad condition of the road allows him to make only one trip a day instead of the two and sometimes three trips he did in the past.
We then carry on and suddenly the heavens unleash torrents of rain. The journey is relatively smooth and uneventful for the next 20 or so kilometres, save for the bumps, and watery ditches here and there.
Suddenly, we arrive at the back end of a long line of trailer and tanker trucks, commercial passenger vehicles and others. The line is longer than the eye can see.
Movement is in fits and starts and after an hour, we have hardly gained one kilometre.
The bus is stuffy but thanks to the rain, the temperature is cool.
Tempers rise as the drudgery wears on and the bus drivers start to weave and swerve between trailer trucks and into watery ditches. Some lanes are blocked for kilometres by trailer trucks that can find no leeway on the crammed roads and are unsure of what lies beneath the watery and muddy ditches on the road sides.
The roads are littered with overturned trailer trucks which cause further obstructions.
After about two hours in the obstacle drag, some passengers begin to disembark from the buses with backpacks and all manner of baggage. They are aborting the journey and going back to Benin.
Others likewise disembark but wish to carry on with the journey, but faster, by motorcycles.
Commercial motorcycles skirt about in the chaos, rendering service to those who wish to go back and those who wish to go forward faster. Their charges are outrageous but the drudgery is numbing and there’s not telling if or when we will get to our destination.
Those who can afford the motorcycle charges pay and vanish into the horizon.
Goats and pigs being transported to market are fainting and dying in their numbers in stalled trucks and their owners are at a loss for what to do.
Opportunistic middlemen quickly arrive to take advantage of the traders’ despair.
They buy off the livestock at knocked down prices and ferry them off in twos and threes on commercial motorcycles to sell for profit at nearby markets, while the stock owners lament their losses.
Several other passengers disembark from the buses carrying their bags on their heads and walk forward or backwards in muddy waters in despair and lamentation.
Young layabouts in rolled up trousers cajole drivers into watery ditches and demand exorbitant charges to help push the vehicles out of the pits.
Eventually, we arrive Sapele at 4.30pm.
