State of Niger roads still worries residents, drivers

On September 3, 2021, Niger State was greeted with a protest by heavy-duty vehicles and tanker drivers over the deplorable condition of Bida-Agaie-Lapai-Lambata Road and the continuous closure of Bida-Minna Road to articulated vehicles. 

The Lambata-Bida road was used as alternative route to the Federal Capital Territory by articulated vehicles, following the temporary closure of Minna-Bida Road to Heavy-Duty Vehicles and Tankers by the Niger State Government to give way for the ongoing road reconstruction.

Frustrated by the deplorable condition of Bida-Lambata road, long closure as well as alleged slow pace of the reconstruction work on Minna-Bida Road by the Dantata and Sawoe Construction Company, the articulated vehicle drivers blocked all the entrances to Niger State from Kwara and Abuja, causing serious traffic jam in Bida and Lambata towns. The blockage also restricted the movement of many travellers for five days.

Niger State, with the largest landmass of about 76,000 square kilometres, has the longest federal roads stretching across the state. These roads include the Lambata-Bida, Suleja-Minna, Birnin Gwari to Jebba road and Minna-Kontagora Road, with all of them being in deplorable conditions over the years.

The Lambata-Lapai-Agaie-Bida Road, for instance, was said to be first constructed by the civilian regime of Alhaji Shehu Usman Shagari in the 1980s, and rehabilitated by the General Sani Abacha-led federal government under the Petroleum Trust Fund intervention project.

However, the Birnin Gwari Road, the oldest in the state, has also been abandoned by motorists due to its deplorable condition and incessant banditry attacks on travellers on the road.

However, even as the protest by the articulated vehicles drivers heightened, the Niger State government insisted that it would not reopen the Minna-Bida Road to the protesting drivers until the ongoing reconstruction was completed.

According to the commissioner for works and infrastructural development, Mamman Musa, “Long before now, the state government has banned articulated vehicles from plying Minna to Bida road because of the on-going construction. We recommended the Lambata/Bida road and that is where they’ve been plying. Lambata road is a federal government contracted road even though the work has been very slow, and articulated drivers wanted to follow Minna Road and by doing that, billions of naira investment that we have made will be wasted and we cannot allow our investment to go in vain.”

The commissioner said the Niger State government had spent over N70bn on intervention on federal roads in the state since 2015, lamenting that “these monies have not been refunded.”

The intervened federal road roads, according to the commissioner, include Suleja-Minna, Minna-Tegina-Kontagora Road among others.

Musa said the Suleja-Minna Road, contracted by the federal government for the past 10 years, had not attained 30 per cent completion, adding that the Lambata-Bida road was contracted five years ago but yet to record any significant progress. 

However, the five-day protest brought a lot of attention; from the National Assembly to the Federal Ministry of Works, while it also affected the economy of residents in towns and villages along the Road and commercial drivers plying Minna-Bida, Minna-Suleja and Abuja among others.

A trader in Bida told Daily Trust on Sunday that “I used to take my goods to the market with Keke (tricycle) but throughout the period that the tanker drivers blocked the road, I couldn’t go to market because there was no road to pass to the market.”

Also, a commercial driver who plies the Minna-Bida-Lagos route, Muhammadu Abubakar Gana Kinboku, said the deplorable condition of roads in the state, especially the Minna-Bida and Lambata-Bida roads caused a lot of damages to their vehicles.

“Apart from damages it does to our vehicles, it causes a lot of accidents. Several lives have been lost on Minna-Bida Road in the last seven years that the road has been bad. The accidents are mostly caused by the dust, especially during the dry season. When the dust rises as vehicles are moving, sometime you won’t see oncoming vehicles.”

He said before the road deteriorated, it took drivers 45 minutes or one hour depending on the speed limit to travel the 86km from Minna to Bida. But with the current condition, “We spend three hours to travel from Minna to Bida, if your vehicle doesn’t breakdown on the road.”

Passengers and private commuters also lamented the difficulty they underwent plying the deplorable roads in the state, coupled with the hike in transport fare due to increased number of hours spent on the road.

“Before the road deteriorated, drivers used to charge us N500 from Minna to Bida but now, we pay N1,000.”

According to Abubakar Zakiru, an official of the Road Transport Union, “Bida-Minna Road had been in bad shape since the previous administrations in the state.

Several shop owners, vulcanizers and automobile mechanics, especially in Bida and Lambata, were forced to shut their businesses during the protest because they were not easily accessible by their customers.

A resident of Agaie, one of the major towns along Lambata-Bida road, Aliyu B. Abdulmalik, told Daily Trust on Sunday that “Between 2018 and date, when certain portions of the road were cut off, traveling hours have increased. When the road was good, I used to spend 18 to 30 minutes to drive through 30km road between Agaie and Lapai but now Agaie to Lapai will take you one hour.”

Another source who didn’t want his name in print said the road has witnessed high rate of accidents in the last few years, especially involving tankers and heavy-duty-vehicles due to the deplorable nature of the road.”

Daily Trust on Sunday also learnt that Agaie’s Sunday market was seriously affected last Sunday due to the blockage by the tanker drivers which denied traders passage, especially those coming from Bida, Lambata and Lapai axis.

A resident in Agaie, Suleiman Baba, said “The population of traders reduced drastically because those coming from Bida and Lapai axis couldn’t attend the market. There was no road to pass. And even those who came to buy goods couldn’t take them out at the end of the day. I knew of about 17 trucks, who loaded goods from Agaie market on Sunday but couldn’t leave until Wednesday because the road was blocked.”

The protest also posed health risk to communities and towns around the blocked road. Protesting drivers were said to have converted the roadside drainages and canals to defecating sites, which constituted serious health hazard, especially at a time the country was experiencing cholera outbreak.

Doctor Suraj Ganiyu of the Federal Medical Centre Bida, said “they just looked for a corner or canal and defecate there. It causes a lot of diseases and some of these diseases if they are not promptly attended to, can lead to death.”

However, a former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, appealed to the federal government to fix the rail system to reduce the number of tonnage of heavy trucks plying the roads.

“I am told that Niger State made a study on the road between Minna and Bida; and they said in 24 hours, over 2,000 vehicles ply that road and 90 percent of them are heavy-duty vehicles and trailers. Most of these roads were not built for such heavy vehicles. There must be control of tonnage on our roads.

“Unfortunately, because our railway system is yet to be optimized, you find a lot of tankers and heavy-duty vehicles plying our roads. If the railways were working, it will reduce the number of tonnage being plied on our roads,” he said.

The Senator Representing Niger South Senatorial District, Mohammed Bima Enagi, also appealed to the Federal Ministry of works and other relevant agencies to, as a matter concern, address the challenges of bad roads in Niger State.

“We have the worst of roads in Niger State. I call on the Minister of Works and Housing and Minister of Finance and all other relevant government agencies to please address these challenges not only in Niger State but in the whole country. Fixing that road means a lot to the ordinary man and business men,” he said.

Senator Enagi noted that fixing the deplorable federal roads in the state would help boost economic activities, not only in Niger State but Nigeria as a whole, as Niger State serves as a link between the North and Western part of the country.