Endless nightmare on Lagos-Badagry Expressway

When the Lagos State government under Governor Babatunde Fashola in 2009 awarded the contract for the reconstruction and expansion of the Lagos-Badagry Expressway to 10 lanes, with a BRT lane and a light rail track, James Okon, who resides at Okota area of the state, quickly gathered up his savings and acquired a plot of land at Okokomaiko, just off the expressway.

Okon, a banker who works at the Marina branch of a tier-2 Nigerian bank, was full of hopes. Once the road was completed, he had thought, going to and from work would be pretty easy. He would not need to drive to work most days. He would either catch a train from Okoko to Marina and back or take a BRT.

And so, a year after work commenced on the road, Okon began to build, committing every spare naira that came his way into the housing project. Block by block, his house stood completed.

Today, three years after he completed work on his five-bedroom bungalow at Okoko, Okon is still squeezed into a two-bedroom flat with his family at Okota, where he pays N650,000 per year, while his house into which he has committed all his resources lies fallow. Not much progress has been made on the reconstruction work and the gridlock on the expressway does not seem like it is going away anytime soon.

“I had projected that I would move into my house in 2015, but that dream never materialized because I don’t think it is a good economic decision for someone to leave wherever he is at the moment to say he wants to go and live on the Lagos-Badagry Expressway. That would be like signing one’s own death warrant. The health, economic and social implications are just too numerous,” said Okon.

Like Okon, businesses, residents and property investors 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. The work has progressed at a very slow pace, leaving a sour taste in the mouth of businesses and residents 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, Lagos State University, National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, the Nigerian French Language Village, 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.

The work has, however, dragged on endlessly. BDSUNDAY’s recent tour of the road showed that apart from skeletal work on the flyover bridge around Finiger Bus-stop, the contractor handling the Lot 2 (Mile 2 to Okokomaiko) of 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 – harbour nightmarish traffic jams depending on the direction you are headed.

Businesses located on that axis are groaning. Traders at Alaba International Market told this reporter 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 Association (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 Association (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, discomforting residents 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.”

When reconstruction work on the expressway gathered momentum in 2016, in the early days of the administration of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, businesses, residents and road users began to cheer, reawakening the hope of the massive development that the completion of the road would bring about in the area.

“It’s going to really help everyone that has a business along this area and also bring about so much development. People don’t want to come and work or live here because of the traffic they experience. But if the road is completed, I believe this area will also measure up with other parts of Lagos in civilization and development,” Emmanuel Oshobajo, then manager at ION Filling Station, had told BDSUNDAY.

“Businesses will thrive and people will come, knowing they can drive down to this place without traffic. Hopefully, the train section will also come on board, and considering that Badagry is just around the corner, with a seaport being planned around there, all this will bring development to this area beyond imagination,” he had said.

But then, the work had slowed again, dashing all hopes and expectations. It has now completely stalled following Governor Ambode’s failure to secure his party’s ticket for his second-term bid. It is the belief of many that nothing may be done on the road until a new government comes onboard in Lagos State in 2019.

But 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.

 

CHUKS OLUIGBO