THISDAYonline

For motorists and travellers on the Benin-Lagos Road, hell may be no better than the situation they are now faced with.

The road, which has been in a most deplorable state, making travelling on the road very difficult, may have finally caved in last week at a point a little after the Edo State and Ore, Ondo State boundary.

The situation became so bad that trucks, which attempted to go through the cut off point, fell across both sides of the road to make passage through the area virtually impossible.

By last week Tuesday and Wednesday, heavy traffic had built up at both the Lagos and Benin sides of the road, making movement completely impossible, no thanks to drivers, who in the attempt to manoeuver their vehicles out of the chaos, came facing each other to completely disrupt traffic movement.

With the area completely cut off, vehicles resorted to going through a muddy bush path, presumably the old road, now swallowed up in the forest

Drivers said they go about four kilometres in the muddy bush path before they could come out to the road to continue with the journey either way. With vehicles diverting to the narrow bush path to avoid the bad part of the road, motorists and travellers were soon trapped in another traffic jam on the bush path. Vehicles hardly had space to snake through one another or had resorted to a side waiting for the other to move before it did. Travellers and motorists spent several hours, as it has remained since last week, on hold ups in the area. Some others were there all night, while those, who could not stand it after hours of no hope of getting pass there, managed to return to Benin, for those going to Lagos, in over an hour drive, to go through Oluku junction to the Ondo, Ife, Ibadan Road to Lagos.

This reporter, who was also a victim, had left Benin City at 11am last week Wednesday, got to the bad point a little after noon, trying to return to Lagos.

The place was jam- packed, vehicles were bumper to bumper and could hardly move. Like others, our vehicle man aged to go into the bush path from the road.

After about half a kilometre drive on the muddy lonely bush path, the vehicle ran into a worse traffic hold up.

There was panic on the part of all, motorists and travellers. A very thick forest,the fear of the unknown descended on all. A road notorious before now for armed robbery attacks, there were fears of robbers possibly attacking the stucked vehicles or the rains, which now fall all day in the Benin area, starting any time to make the already muddy tiny path impossible for vehicles to move on anymore.

To worsen matters, it was impossible coming down from the vehicles with mud everywhere and no space to step on. The vehicles were hot, there was no option but stay in. Children were heard wailing, obviously from the effect of heat.

A mother, who carried less than a two-year old baby, and claimed to be a Federal civil servant, going to Lagos from Benin, was virtually in tears unable to help the situation of her baby. She had thought of buying water at Ore but did not because she could not get table water at the Benin toll gate.

"I don't drink pure water and I don't give it to my children because you could hardly trust their sources.

"Very unfortunately I did not get to buy at the Benin toll gate. I had hoped that we will get at Ore, knowing that they always hawk them there", the woman explained to co-travellers, begging anyone, who has water to give her some for her wailing baby to drink. The baby cried profusely, asking for water.

A lady, equally carrying a baby, who complained that she had only a cup of water in a flask for her baby, managed to give some to the baby. The mother of the weeping baby would not allow her to finish it at ago, scared that the baby would demand for another with the not certain when we will get out of the place.

All over, there was chaos. As the day ate away and the vehicles remained at a stand still, our driver and some others opted to manoeuver their vehicles to make u-turns to return to the express and possibly go back to Benin to take the Ondo, Ife, Ibadan Road.

It took an hour to do that.

As the vehicle remained held up, travellers and motorists bemoan the state of the nation and government's purported display of irresponsibility in all aspect of the nation's life.

One driver wondered why uptill now government had not deemed it necessary to do something on the state of the Benin-Lagos Road, generally acknowledged as one of the busiest in the country.

"They cannot say that they are unaware of the high volume of traffic on this road. It is the major road leading to the East, the entire South South, and even for those going to Abuja.

"There are as many cars, plying the road as there are heavy duty vehicles. Ordinarily, a road of this nature requires special attention", the driver submitted.

A woman, who agreed in toto with the driver, added: " Government has no reason not doing anything about this all important road uptill now.

"Between Lagos and Benin, they have not less than five toll gates on the road at which money are collected from motorists all year round.

"What is the money being used for? One would have thought the purpose for the collection of tolls on the road is to ensure its maintenance. The money is only being collected and diverted to other purposes.

"Without being told, what is collected as tolls on this road yearly runs into several billions of naira. If they are to do anything to the road today, the money obviously would not be coming from government pocket, but tolls generated from the road; that is the practice in the civilised world".

Yet, another motorist, anger written all over him, submitted: "Our problem here is that our governments are only interested in contract awards and not maintenance. They leave things to completely go bad so that they can award contracts in billions of naira for their self- enrichment.

"The colonial governments had what they referred to as Public Works Departments (PWDs) at allpoints of major highways for the purpose of maintaining the roads. The PWDs, which were a unit of the Federal Ministry of Works, were in place even after independence.

"Subsequent governments gradually phased them out to allow for fraudulent contract awards and till today, there has been no attempt to resuscitate them. We have continued to award contracts. If the PWDs are on the Lagos-Benin Road, the situation of the road would not have degenerated to this level, where it has now become virtually impassable".

The debate was unending and had continued till our driver managed to make a return to Benin and turned into the Ondo, Ife, Ibadan Road via the Oluku junction to finally continue with the journey to Lagos.

Several other vehicles successfully turned back to join us in the most excruciating journey.

Of course, we finally got to Lagos at about 10.30pm, using about 11 hours on the road for a journey that should ordinarily take a maximum of three hours.

A friend, who came through the road the following day, said he left Benin 10 am and got to Lagos 11pm, working out at 13 hours on the road. That is what you have going on there now, the situation is not only chaotic, night marish, it is hell