…Works minister says raising funds for road repairs
The Benin-Sapele Road, South-West Nigeria, which spans about 64 kilometres and should ordinarily take an estimated 50 minutes to travel by car, is now broken into deep muddy ditches and gulleys, which take bus drivers about six hours to navigate, while trailer truck drivers report being stranded for upwards of five days.
Several trailer trucks also routinely tip over and fall, further hindering the flow of traffic and spewing goods onto the roads. The goods often get damaged or pilfered, causing irretrievable losses to the owners.
This is as David Umahi, the new Minister of Works, reports recently paying federal road contractors N4 trillion and identifying sources of funding for another N4 trillion worth of Federal Government road projects.
Umahi, says the administration of President Bola Tinubu inherited N14 trillion worth of roads work across the country from its predecessor, Mumammadu Buhari, spanning 18,000 kilometres in 2,604 projects.
Engineering sources list the problems with Nigerian roads, as often having to do with poor structural designs or execution, poor drainage systems or the lack of drainage altogether, as well as poor maintenance or the absence thereof, all of which cause roads to become unserviceable.
Our reporter traveled the route from Benin City, the Edo State capital, to Sapele in Delta State in a commercial van on Saturday September 16.
The journey which should take about 50 minutes with the road in good condition, took six hours (from 10.30 a.m. to 4.30p.m).
The road is classified ‘Trunk-A’, and is in the exclusive purview of the Federal Government to construct maintain and secure. The state governments through which the roads pass are not allowed to fix them or intervene in any way.
Buses conveying passengers from Benin to Sapele now charge N4, 000. For passengers going to Warri, a little further up the road, the charge is N6,000.
Six weeks ago the fare for Sapele was N2, 500.
A bus driver who gave his name as David explained the fare hikes to the poor condition of the roads and the extra fuel expended in the logjam, among other factors.
This point of view was echoed by other drivers along the route.
David lamented that sustaining his family was getting more difficult by the day because the poor state of the road permits him to make only one trip a day, instead of the two and sometimes three trips he made daily in the past.
He further said that he had spent about N120,000 the previous day, buying spares for his Toyota Sienna bus and paying mechanics, as a result of damage done by bad roads and constant immersion of his vehicle in the ever present flood waters.
Hordes of vendors swarmed and loitered around the gridlock of vehicles.
These included vendors of snacks, food, water and soft drinks, selling their wares to hungry and thirsty passengers.
Also included, were itinerant mechanics who loitered around, looking for stalled vehicles to service for a fee.
Some young men directed vehicle drivers into sticky ditches in the flood waters and then offered to push the vehicles out for a fee.
Commercial motorcycle riders also weaved and swerved around the stranded vehicles, picking up passengers frustrated from long immobile sitting in the jam.
They cyclists charged exorbitant fares to take these passengers briskly beyond the points of the jam, forwards or backwards, to get to their destinations or back from where they started out.
At a point after the town of Ologbo, about half way through the slow and grinding journey, a trailer truck offloaded tens of exhausted, fainting and dead goats onto the roadside.
Opportunistic businessmen and women rushed forward to buy the exhausted livestock at knocked down prices from the owners who feared total losses.
The new buyers then carted the goats away in threes and fours on motorbikes, to sell elsewhere at a premium.
The same happened for a cargo of pigs in another truck a little further up the road.
All along the route, the bus drivers received incessant phone calls from people to whom they were conveying parcels for fees, who had been waiting for hours on end beyond the expected time of arrival.
The bus finally arrived Sapele at 4.30 in the evening, six hours after departure from Benin at 10.30 in the morning, into the waiting arms of handful of customers who were anxiously waiting to collect their couriered parcels.
