TUNDE OLUSUNLE argues that the Abuja-Lokoja road, like many others, deserves urgent attention
I have somehow never been excited by reports and updates about the Lagos-Calabar coastal road, and it’s Badagry-Sokoto alternate, regularly described as “legacy projects” of the incumbent administration. Not because they are not desirable, not because they do not hold potential for future socioeconomic advancement of Nigeria, but because so many other critical roads have been abandoned in the mania for the speedy realisation of both projects. Controversial Works Minister, Dave Umahi, never spares the opportunity of every other visit of President Bola Tinubu to Lagos State, to get him to commission every partially completed short stretch of the 700-kilometre Lagos-Calabar road. He forever strains to convince us that the government is genuinely perspiring and that the “renewed hope” mantra of the regime is truly delivering hope.
It’s been a regular refrain in many of my writings that my hitherto preferred mode of intra-country commuting, was the road. It’s sad to speak of wellness in the past tense, but our roads were better 20 years ago and security was relatively guaranteed. I once went on a road drive from Lagos to Katsina with a friend back in 1998, and we took turns to steer the wheels. I have been driven in my car from Makurdi to Lagos, detouring only to Ilorin for a brisk appearance at a ceremony, before proceeding. One could almost readily put estimated arrival times, (ETA) on one’s journeys those years, such that my wife made same day return road trips between Abuja and Ilorin on a few occasions, while undergoing a postgraduate programme at the University of Ilorin. Shuttling between Abuja and Lokoja, Abuja and Makurdi, Abuja to Kaduna, or Abuja to Jos, used to be leisure rides, where travel time and object of travel were achievable in broad daylight.
The administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo initiated the dualisation of the 200-kilometre Abuja-Lokoja road, in its twilight back in 2006. Historically, it has been a critical link between Southern, Eastern and Western Nigeria to the federal capital, Abuja, and the country’s global North. For the avoidance of doubt, commuters and truckers departing the South Eastern states of Enugu, Imo and Anambra; the South South geo-polities of Bayelsa, Delta and Edo, and the South Western Osun, Ondo and Ekiti, can only access Abuja via the Abuja-Lokoja road. The Enugu-Otukpo-Oweto-Keffi route is a possible alternative for travellers from deeper South-South and South-East Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Abia, Ebonyi and Enugu, even as the Abuja-Lokoja road remains more popular.
The project was initially awarded for the sum of N42 Billion in 2006, and parcelled to four construction companies, namely: Dantata and Sawoe, and Bulletine Construction Company Limited, (both indigenous concerns), as well as Reynolds Construction Company Nigeria Ltd, (RCC), and Gitto Construozioni Generali, both foreign outfits. It was a deliberate policy of the Obasanjo government to encourage local participation in the socioeconomy, which witnessed the exponential growth of indigenous enterprise. Sub-dividing the project into four lots therefore was both to encourage the participation of four competent companies in the construction of the road, and also to expedite the realisation of the project which was expected to be delivered within 30 months. By the reckoning of the Obasanjo government, the Abuja-Lokoja road should have been delivered by 2009, government, expectedly, being a continuum.
The Umaru Musa Yar’Adua government which inherited the project, however, was largely disinterested in its pursuit. By the time Yar’Adua transitioned and was succeeded by Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, only 30 percent completion had been achieved which naturally left the road decrepit and perilous. The Abuja-Lokoja road project snailed uneventfully through the Jonathan government, it’s mortally dangerous claiming well over 200 lives in 2011 only. In 2015, the project was inherited by Muhammadu Buhari whose administration was most famous for its attention to the resuscitation of the nation’s rail sector. Men of the underworld took advantage of unmotorable stretches of the road to unleash mayhem on road users. July 15, 2021, Hassan Ahmed, a Major-General and former Provost-Marshal of the Nigerian Army was killed by gunmen while travelling on the road. He dared to travel without armed escort.
The advent of the Tinubu administration has witnessed a new lease of life for the troubled road project. Indeed, last November, four contractors handling an 86-kilometre section of the road, were disengaged by the Federal Ministry of Works. Sadogi Nig Ltd; Venus Construction Ltd; Geld/Triacta Nig Ltd, and Transcrete Solutions Ltd, were sanctioned for “poor performance and failure to meet delivery timelines and performance benchmarks.” The March 4, 2026 edition of the federal executive council meeting, (FEC), presided over by Tinubu, reawarded the project to new handlers, Julius Berger Nigeria Ltd, easily the largest and most reputable construction company in Nigeria. The section is valued at N146 Billion, and the government has reportedly tightened timelines for the actualization of the project.
As has become sadly customary, commuters who travelled on the Abuja-Lokoja road during the Easter break, had sad narratives to share. Their experiences were not any better than the situation during the 2025 Christmas and new year season, when travellers were stuck on the road for several days. Early birds who left their locations from both the northern and southern ends of the Abuja-Lokoja road, found themselves hedged in by the typically intractable gridlock occasioned by the non-completion of the road. All it takes is a vehicular breakdown, the impatience of a driver, an argument between two drivers or an incident between a security official and a driver, to precipitate the manner of traffic snarl which keeps people in sun and rain, dust and dew for days on end in the middle of nowhere on the highway. All of these resulting from the constrained condition of the road. The aggregate loss in productive man hours, when thousands of Nigerians are demobilised and dysfunctional on account of the failure of infrastructure, is better imagined.
The Abuja-Lokoja road perhaps deserves a place in the *Guinness World Records* as one Nigerian project which has been in progress for a staggering 20 years, through the regimes of five elected Presidents. Tinubu indeed is the fifth successive President to be involved with efforts to complete the seemingly jinxed project. The recent reaward of the project raises some optimism that dark times on the road may be over, to borrow from the title of one of the books by my revered teacher, Emeritus Professor Olu Obafemi. That is to the extent that beyond the grand estimated cost of the completion of the work, funds are released as and when due. Contractors are wont to complain about being owed for long periods of time which often pitches them against their financing institutions and obliterates their margins. Practical, timely, visible progress must attend the recent attempt to put the project to bed. Nigerians, henceforth, should not spend their nights hapless, hopeless, famished, forlorn left to the void and vagaries of the unpredictable highway.
Like the Abuja-Lokoja road, the half-hearted attention which has been paid to other very critical projects through the decades despite improving fiscal accruals to the government and humongous borrowings thereof, is unthinkable. It is all the more disheartening, the prioritisation of multi-trillion naira ornamental projects like the Lagos-Calabar coastal road and its Badagry-Sokoto parallel when road projects which have direct and immediate impact on the socioeconomy are palpably downscaled. Roads like the Lagos-Ibadan expressway; the Ibadan-Ilorin dual carriage way; the Shagamu-Ore-Benin highway; the East-West road traversing about six Niger Delta states; the Lokoja- Kabba-Isanlu-Egbe-Ilorin road; the Kabba-Iyara-Omuo Ekiti road, among others, are critical to the lifeblood of our country. The Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano road; the Ogoja-Katsina Ala-Makurdi road, and so on, also deserve to be prioritised. Is there a holistic policy for their sustained funding and ultimate completion?
I should add in conclusion that motorable roads actually have a direct correlation to the mitigation of insecurity. Bandits and terrorists successfully exploit the tangible constraints occasioned by decayed roads to ply their crimson trade. They are ever confident that response and rescue will be impeded because of the gloomy reality of our road infrastructure. A country where humans and their goods are able to move seamlessly around and about, day and night, is conquering insecurity and engendering socioeconomic progress. Much more than bourgeois fantasies like airports which have become the obsession of many governors, we must get it right with our national road network. We must ensure that no part of the country is too far because of the sorry state of the road, or that Nigerians will be vulnerable to criminals and the elements because roads are impassable.
Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja
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