No respite to businesses, residents on Lagos-Badagry Expressway 9yrs on

Businesses and residents on the Lagos-Badagry Expressway are yet to heave a sigh of relief nine years after work commenced on the reconstruction and expansion of the expressway to 10 lanes with a BRT lane and a light rail track.
Work on the road, whose contract was awarded in 2009 under the administration of Governor Babatunde Fashola in Lagos State, has progressed at a very slow pace, leaving businesses and residents constantly counting their losses as grinding gridlock leads to loss of man-hours, business opportunities, health hazards, and even deaths.
Lagos-Badagry Expressway’s strategic economic importance stems from its position as the gateway to Nigeria’s West Coast neighbours of Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, etc. It is also home to West Africa’s largest electronics hub, Alaba International Market, Lagos International Trade Fair Complex which currently harbours four major markets, the proposed Badagry Deep Seaport, among others.
When completed, the reconstruction/expansion project is expected to transform the face of Lagos, unlock the gridlock on the expressway that is prone to heavy traffic flow, and open up opportunities for greater investments and regional trade between Nigeria and its neighbours on the West Coast of Africa.

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BusinessDay’s recent tour of the road showed that apart from skeletal work on the flyover bridge around Finiger Bus-stop, the contractor handling the project, China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. (CCECC) has practically vacated site as there was no sign of the company’s workers anywhere else. Meanwhile, virtually all the major junctions on the expressway – from Alakija to Abule-Ado, Trade Fair under-bridge, Ojo Barracks, Volkswagen, Iyana-Iba, etc – remain terrible traffic points depending on where you are headed.
Traders at Alaba International Market told BusinessDay last week that the bad shape of the road has adversely affected volume of business activity in the market.
“When you talk of the effect on trade, the bad road has reduced trading activities in the market by more than 90 percent. An average Alaba trader today depends on waybill to survive because the direct customers are no longer coming as a result of the bad roads,” Christian Oguike, treasurer, Alaba International Market (Electronics), said.
Oguike said customers coming to Alaba from some parts of Lagos, like the Island, Ikeja and environs, must access Mile 2 road before getting to the market, and those coming from the West African side, Cote d’Ivoire, Republic of Benin, Ghana and so on, also have to use the same Badagry road. But most of the customers have diverted their patronage rather than having to spend several hours and sometimes the whole day trying to access Alaba.
“No one who has had that experience would want to repeat it because of its effect even on health as well. So, directly or indirectly, it affects trading activities in the market. That is why we are pleading with the Lagos State government to do something urgently on the road. The road needs an urgent attention in order to boost commerce. Alaba as a market employs not less than 1 million workers, directly or indirectly. The market helps the economy of not just Lagos but Nigeria as a whole. It is the hub of electronics in West Africa, but the road has messed everything up,” he said.
Maduabuchi Adiukwu, general PRO, Alaba International Market (Electronics), said business had been slow because of the bad state of the road.
“Some of the customers call us to complain that they spend several hours, sometimes four to six hours, on the road trying to get to the market. If you set out from your house for Alaba International Market as early as 10am and by 4pm you are still in traffic, you have no choice but to go back home, and you wouldn’t want to come back,” Adiukwu said.
“Governor Ambode tried at the inception of his administration, but for some time now work has stopped on the road. I am using this medium again to appeal to the Lagos State government to, as a matter of urgency, facilitate the project, especially now that we in the dry season, so that our customers will have easier access to us. People suffered terribly on the road last rainy season, and if the road remains this way till another rainy season, that will be disastrous,” he said.
But perhaps even more pathetic is the story of ION Filling Station, located between Ojo Barracks and Abule-Oshun on the Mile 2-bound section of the expressway. Motorists no longer use the service lane where the filling station is located as the Abule Oshun-Trade Fair under-bridge stretch of the road has failed completely. The few motorists who ply the road divert into the inner Old Ojo Road through Abule-Oshun, causing traffic jam and piling pressure on Old Ojo Road, already breaking under the weight of tankers and articulated vehicles.
“The terrible state of the road has reduced our sales,” Rotimi Owokuti, manager at ION Filling Station, said. “Before now, we used to sell up to 20,000 litres of petrol per day, but now, because of the bad state of the road, our sales hover between 2,000 and 3,000 litres a day. The worst is the bad spot between Abule-Oshun and the Trade Fair under-bridge. Sometime ago we even tried to see whether we could repair that bad spot but we didn’t have the resources.”
A ranking official of the Lagos State Ministry of Works and Infrastructure said the government is not unaware of the trauma the residents and motorists go through on the road.
The official, who pleaded not to be quoted, however, said the section of the expressway stretching from Mile 2 to Okokomaiko remains under contract, and as a result, there is a limit to which the government can directly intervene on those critical areas like the Trade Fair under-bridge.
What the government is doing, the official said, is to encourage the contractor, CCECC, to fix some of the very bad portions so as to ameliorate the situation. He, however, admitted that the contractor had been starved of funds, which poses a major challenge to the road construction.
“The point is that the contractor is awaiting payment,” said the official, adding that the outcome of the October 2 All Progressives Congress (APC) state primaries and the campaigns for 2019 general elections were taking a toll on the progress of work on the road.
“But the government is not folding its arms. On December 5, a team led by a director from the ministry was dispatched to see what is happening on the road following avalanche of complaints, especially around the Trade Fair axis,” said the official.
The Trade Fair axis of the expressway falls under the Lot 2 contract which was awarded to CCECC in 2011. Since the award of the contract, construction work on this section of the road has been abysmally slow, although it picked up in the early days of the administration of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode before it stalled again.

CHUKS OLUIGBO & JOSHUA BASSEY