Lagos-Ibadan road, Nigeria’s only expressway, has become something of a slaughter slab. The carnage that has occurred since the reconstruction of the 127.6-kilometre road was flagged off in July 2013, is horrendous and petrifying. There is hardly a day that life is not lost on what has become the “highway of death”. Scores have died by accidents as a result of the reduction of the road to single lane for the more than 250, 000 vehicles that traverse it daily. The sick die on the road as traffic gridlock caused by the reconstruction stop them from reaching hospital for medical assistance.
Contract for reconstruction of the road was awarded to Julius Berger and Reynolds Construction Company (RCC) at the cost of N167 billion ($838,986,290). Reconstruction work on the ever-busy expressway was to be completed before 2017.
However, reconstruction of the expressway has suffered several hick-ups.
In the 2018 Budget, the National Assembly in its trademark meddlesomeness, diverted huge sums allocated by the federal government for the project to the funding of mysterious constituency projects. That again stalled work on the project.
At the moment, the federal government itself has indicated that the senseless slaughter on the road due to the agonizingly slow pace of work might continue for three more years. The federal government plans to complete the reconstruction of the expressway by 2022. If that deadline is finally met, it would have taken Nigeria some nine long years to reconstruct a 127.6- kilometre road that took less than five years to build through thick forest and intimidating swamps. The forests that delayed the original construction for four years were hacked down by the original builders but corruption and selfishness have delayed the reconstruction that could have been finished in two years for almost a decade.
Meanwhile, scores of people have died on the road since the reconstruction was flagged off in July 2013. Relatively small accidents on the road that claim one or two lives hardly make the headlines in the media. Those ones occur on daily basis as impatient commercial bus drivers execute dangerous overtaking on the single lane left for all commuters.
The ones that make the headlines are those that claim anything from five lives. The first of such accidents with multiple casualties occurred on March 22, 2015. An articulated truck carrying a 40-foot container lost a tyre, rammed into two incoming cars, slaughtered seven people and wounded 20 others.
What may be the deadliest slaughter on the “highway of death”, occurred about 10 days ago at the RCC end of the reconstruction scene. As usual, only a tiny portion of the road was open to traffic. A MAN Diesel truck lost a tyre and rammed into two buses coming in the opposite direction.
This time Nigeria was not as lucky as it was in 2015. The single accident claimed the lives of 13 passengers in the two buses with several others injured. The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) officials who helped to clear the debris at the scene of the accident blamed the senseless slaughter on one of the bus drivers who impatiently tried to overtake at the wrong place in the narrow lane. That blame game is rather belated. Everyone knows that Nigerian commercial drivers are impatient and like their rulers, have little value for life. Part of the blame for the carnage goes to the government that failed to reduce the suffering of the people by ensuring that the reconstruction work is completed at the appropriate time. In civilized societies, the rehabilitation of a 127.6-kilomtre expressway would not take up to two years.
The suffering on Lagos-Ibadan expressway is unacceptably horrendous. There is no calamity that has not happened on that road since the reconstruction work was flagged off. A pregnant woman who was being rushed to maternity delivered on that road as the horrendous traffic gridlock kept her on the road for hours.
Another person who was rushed to hospital for emergency treatment was not as lucky as the pregnant woman who delivered on the jinx expressway. He died on the road as the endless traffic jam prevented him from reaching medical assistance in the hospital.
All these calamities have befallen a potentially rich nation because its abundant resources had over the years been looted and mismanaged by its rulers. Millions of man-hours are lost daily as traffic gridlock hold down millions of travelers for five hours in a journey of 90 minutes.
The delay in the reconstruction of Lagos-Ibadan expressway is not caused by Nigeria’s self-imposed poverty. It is caused by gross misalignment of priorities and wrong allocation of resources. Nigeria has done greater things faster in the past.
The first Niger Bridge in Onitsha was built within three years and commissioned in 1966. That was when Nigeria was much, much poorer than it is today. Now, as a richer nation, it is going to take about eight years to build the Second Niger Bridge.
Work on the east-west road has lumbered along for close to 20 years, because money meant for it was misappropriated and diverted into private pockets. The rehabilitation of the Benin-Shagamu road has lingered for 10 years. It is yet to reach Ijebu-Ode. At the current pace, the remaining work might last another five years. Again, that is due to uninhibited corruption and wrong alignment of priorities rather than paucity of funds.
The diversion of N10 billion from the Lagos-Ibadan expressway project by the National Assembly in 2018 delayed the project by at least six months. The money served the selfish interest of 469 members of the National Assembly rather than expediting work on a road that would ease the movement of at least one million commuters daily.
The federal government owes Nigerians the responsibility of ending the carnage on Lagos-Ibadan expressway by appropriately funding the project and ensuring that the road is fully opened to traffic by the end of 2020.
