Horror as Lagos-Ibadan expressway claims 424 lives in 24months
By It is as shocking as it is thought-provoking that whole 424 lives have been lost through road accidents on the ever busy Lagos-Ibadan expressway in the last 24 months.
Officials of the Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC), who revealed this when the federal government opened the section one of the expressway recently to ease traffic flow for travelers, explained that 210 of those deaths occurred in 2017 while the remainder happened this year.
Clement Oladele, FRSC Sector Commander, Ogun State, explained that about 50 percent of the deaths occurred at the construction zones, but blamed the incidents on the impatience of the motorists. What this means however is that the contractor may have been negligent in his road diversion strategy and that needs to be addressed quickly to avoid further waste of lives and resources.
Lagos –Ibadan expressway, which has garnered notoriety for the frequent motor accidents recorded on it, has become a perpetual construction site as the reconstruction of the expressway which started some years ago is yet to be completed. The section one which was temporarily opened covers its stretch from Lagos Toll Gate to Shagamu in Ogun State. The section two begins from here and ends in Ibadan.
The delay in completing the reconstruction work is reason, among other things, for the huge increase in the contract sum by almost 100 percent to N134 billion, up from N70 billion initial contract sum.
The expressway is one of the busiest arterial roads in the country. It is the major route to the Northern and Eastern parts of the country. The expressway facilitates trade and commerce between the commercial cities of Onitsha in the East and Lagos in the West.
Oladele observed that, in 2017, his command recorded 1.8 million travelers on the expressway while, this year, as at the third quarter, that is by the end of September, they had recorded two million.
“For the Yuletide period, we have started a special operation on this road that will last from December 15, 2018 to January 15,2019. Our expectation is that 350,000 vehicles will pass through this road. It could have been more, but for the fact that some families have decided not to travel because of expected fuel scarcity and gridlock; we also expect that more people may travel as the expressway has been opened”, he noted.
Earlier, Adedamola Kuti, the federal controller of works in Lagos, had explained that the opening of the expressway was to minimise the hardship for travelers on the expressway, especially those going home for Christmas, and to reduce travel time and cost for them.
He assured that the reconstruction work would continue after the Yuletide, saying that the federal government has set aside a huge sum of money, about $650 million infrastructure fund, to ensure that there was no slow down in construction activities.
“The $650 million is meant to complete this expressway, Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Road, East-West Road, Plateau-Mambila Bridge and Second Nigeria Bridge under the federal government’s infrastructure fund. The fund is growing and, if I have my figures right, it must have reached $1 billion by now”, he said.
Julius Berger, the contractor handling the reconstruction work, also assured that work would resume on the expressway immediately after the Christmas celebrations and would continue non-stop. The reconstruction of the Expressway is to cover its entire stretch from the Lagos Toll Gate to where it terminates in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
Chuka Uroko