CHUKA UROKO
For East-West travelers, the thought of Benin-Ore Road is the beginning of a journey into uncertainties and the easiest way of booking appointment with fate. This is because one is on a journey that is fraught with possibilities including not concluding one’s journey same day, loss of properties and threat to life. The continued deterioration in the condition of that long stretch of road between Benin, the Edo State capital, and Ore in Ondo State which is about the only gateway to the east from the western part of the country portrays Nigeria as a country where leadership is not only insensitive to the plight of the citizens, but also impervious to criticism.
This portion of the East-West road is a metaphor for neglect and has remained a nightmare to travelers with the craters that dot most part of it begging for attention and repair. There have been hues and cries from every section of the society, especially the press, about the deplorable condition of the road and the need to repair it because of the danger it poses to human life.
Almost every newspaper and television house in Nigeria has had one thing or another to write and say about this road all in an attempt to draw government’s attention to it. This, perhaps, informed the inspection of the road by the former minister of transport, Dezani Allison-Madueke.
The condition of the road is such that the honourable minister had to shed tears after the inspection, apologizing to Nigerians for having been subjected to the kind of harrowing experience the road gives on daily basis. It is about three years now since the minister shed those (crocodile?) tears yet the road has been allowed to move from bad to worse.
Now, with the rains and all, travel time on the road has increased by 60 percent from six hours to ten hours and, in some cases, 11 hours. For the same reason, transport fare on that route has also gone up by 30 percent in just four months from N1,500 in February to N2,000 and N2,100 this June depending on which part of the East one is traveling to.
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A driver with Peace Mass Transit Company that plies that route told this reporter who traveled to Onitsha from Lagos recently that the past two months had been hell for them on the road following the onset of the rainy season.
It has been hell on this road in the past two months or so. The road is bad and the rains have come. Before now, we used to get to Onitsha from Lagos in six hours, but now if you reach Onitsha in ten hours, it means you must have left Lagos before six o’clock in the morning, he said with anguish all over him.
The driver who simply identified himself as James noted that their problem is further compounded by container-laden trucks many of which find it difficult to navigate the ditches on the road and therefore, fall and block the road with their loads.
In Onitsha, Emmanuel Okechukwu, a business man who was on this route every other day also told this reporter that because of the condition of the road, he and a good number of his colleagues have decided to hold on until the condition of the road improves because you are not always sure you will come back with your goods when you want to and business is not done that way. You also consider your safety and the stress.
Given that over 80 percent of commuters on this road are business men that come to the west, Lagos to be precise, to buy goods and convey same to the east, it means the volume of trade and commercial activities across these regions have reduced considerably. And for those who dare to make it and succeed in taking their goods back to their shops, sky is the limit as to how high their prices could go and at the receiving end of it all are the consumers, the ordinary Nigerians.
The idea beats the imagination and, at the same, re-emphasises the failure and shamelessness of Nigerian leadership that this road ordinarily takes home a former minister of works who was alleged to have spent N300 billion fixing Nigerian roads while in office for four years.
If not because we are the way we are, question would have been asked where and how N300 billion was spent and there is virtually nothing to show for it and whoever presided over such waste should bury his face in shame.
It is also a shame that this same road is the one that should take Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to his home in the troubled Niger Delta region, yet it is allowed to inflict pain and anguish on users while quality and productive man-hour is wasted on it daily.
According to James, we are sometimes forced to take bush paths which are not only longer but also pose a lot of risk to us including our passengers and vehicles. Apart from the increased wear and tear on our vehicles, anything can happen to anybody there.
This, he added, explains the small increase in the transport fare, pointing out that very few luxurious buses now ply the route because it takes them over twelve hours to make it to Onitsha and you know what that means to a business man.
It is therefore, worrisome and further beats the imagination why it has taken the Federal Government so long to fix that road on which much has been said and written about because of its strategic importance as a major gateway to the eastern part of the country from the west.
The Obasanjo administration paid lip service to the reconstruction of the road and it is doubtful if the present government has any plans for it, hence the near-hopelessness of motorists and commuters on that route.
Recently, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at its weekly meeting chaired by President Umar Musa Yar’ Adua approved the concessioning of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway to Bi-Courtney Nigeria for 25 years. The company is to upgrade the expressway with N89.53 billion and recoup its investment through collection of fees at toll gates.
Same day, FEC also approved a N44.88 billion contract re-awarded to Setraco Construction for the construction of the East-West Bypass linking Kaiama and Ahoada. The contract was earlier awarded to the construction giant, Julius Berger, who abandoned it in July last year after it lost two expatriate staff in attacks by militants.
In the past couple of years of the YarAdua administration, nothing dependable has been heard from government about the Benin-Ore road. Nothing stops it from doing what it has done with Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and the East-West Bypass on this road.
This is because rehabilitation work on the road which showed some level of seriousness sometime ago, seems to have been abandoned in the past couple of years.
It is against this backdrop that James appealed to the Federal Government to wake up to its responsibilities, particularly on that road, so as to end the nightmare that is a daily experience on that part of the country.
