Motorists, commuters and residents in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub, were on Thursday thrown into difficulty navigating their way through town as long hours of heavy rainfall triggered unprecedented flooding across the sprawling city.
The rain, which began from Wednesday morning continued through Thursday afternoon, leaving many access roads in the state flooded with resultant traffic jams.
While no parts of the city was really spared the ordeal, areas like Eti-Osa-Lekki Expressway, Ahmadu Bello Way, and part of Awolowo Road, all on the island were worse off.
A similar scenario was noticed at Mile 2 Oke on Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, as well as on Mile 2, inward Suru-Alaba on Lagos-Badagry Expressway.
Also not spared were parts of Ikeja, the state capital, including Awolowo Way, Oba Akran and Ikeja-Along on Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway.
In Alimosho, the largest local government area in the state, areas like Iyana Ejigbo, Idimu and Egbeda, driving inward Akowonjo, were submerged.
Residents were seen bailing waters from their homes and calling on the government to intervene by desilting the gutters and opening up blocked drainages.
One of the residents in Egbeda area, who identified himself as Tunde Samson, said it has become an annual ‘ritual’ to be bailing waters from their homes every rainy season, blaming the situation on a collapsed drainage system around Vulcanizer Bus Stop on Akonwonjo Road.
According to Samson, efforts by the local government have yielded little or no result, adding that the state government’s intervention was urgently needed to address the situation.
At Mile 2 inward Suru-Alaba, several vehicles were seen wading through the heavy flooding on the reconstructed Lagos-Badagry Expressway. The situation was further compounded by the horde of articulated trucks and tankers competing for space on the expressway.
Motorists at the scene blamed the situation on what they described as poor construction by the contractor.
“This is a road that had just been reconstructed a few years ago yet we can’t drive through anytime it rains. It shows there was something fundamentally wrong with construction work undertaken by the contractor,” a motorist at Mile 2.
