Today, Saturday, madness and confusion continues to walk in all fours and possibly break bones, on the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway as Julius Berger Nigeria Plc., continues with its unending rehabilitation and expansion of the road to include a rail track.
Though, the traffic logjam on the road is an everyday affair, it gets out of control at weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, due to increase of traffic on the road as a result of people travelling out of or into Lagos for one social event or the other. It also becomes terribly bad any weekend (Friday and Saturday) when any of the mega pentecostal churches or the Islamic centre on the road is hosting one activity or the other.
The confusion, akin to what the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, sang in one of his classics, Confusion Break Bone normally starts from the last long bridge on the road and sometimes stretches up to the Sagamu Interchange where one part of the road leads straight to Ibadan and other South West towns and northern states while the other heads straight to South South, South East and parts of South other west states.
The confusion, which is usually accompanied by the lawlessness of motorists, especially commercial drivers, usually lasts for hours. Sometimes, the Lagos to Ibadan travel hour, which is estimated at an hour, lasts for more than four hours and on some cases, a whole day while it takes several hours to make it to south east or south south. Weeks ago the frustration and nightmare became so unbearable that traffic management authorities like the Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC), the Nigeria Police and TRACE issued travel advisory urging motorists to take alternate roads like the Lagos/Abeokuta Expressway, Ikorodu/Sagamu Road or Lekki/Epe Road. But the question is, are those roads any better? Especially the Lagos/Abeokuta Road. The road is as bad if not worse, than Lagos/Ibadan Express road. The road, which is also under repair, is terribly bad as from the foot of the Ota flyover bridge, which was inaugurated some years ago by the ex-House of Representatives’ Speaker, Dimeji Bankole. The bumpy ride for those who ply the road on a daily basis starts from the foot of the bridge down to Ilaro junction of the road. Sometimes it takes four hours of travel time to get to Abeokuta, the capital city of Ogun State. So the road cannot be said to be a good alternative for those who want to escape the bedlam at Lagos/Ibadan Express Road. Same for the other supposedly alternate roads. So in case of an external attack on Lagos, Lagosians have no where to escape to as all roads in and out of the city, are no go area.
It must be stated that repair works on the road was started by Wale Babalakin’s Bicourtney in 2009 under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led government. The company was assigned part of the road from the Ojota toll gate to Sagamu Interchange, a distance of 105 kilometres.
In 2028 budget, the Senate under Bokola Saraki, yanked N1.14b off the budgetary allocation for the repair of the road.
The ministry of works has remained mute as to when the repair works will end or why it is so slow. Even an sms message sent to the media aid of the Minister of Works, Babatunde Fashola, Hakeem Bello, has remained unanswered to even as at the time of going to press.
