As a means of tackling the problems of perennial traffic congestion usually encountered by those coming into the Nigeria capital city, the administration of late President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2008 awarded a contract for the expansion of the Abuja Airport and Kubwa expressway. They are also known as the Outer Southern Expressway and Outer Northern Expressway respectively.
Apart from being the location of many residential estates, communities and offices, the two are the major arteries into the Abuja city centre from the Southern and some parts of the Northern section of the country. The Airport Expressway connects the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport to the Abuja city centre.
The contract, which involved expansion of the roads to 10 lanes as well as the rehabilitation of the existing expressways, was awarded at a whopping cost of N257 billion. The two lots of the Airport Expressway project were managed by Julius Berger, while Messrs Dantata and Sawoe and CGC Nigeria Limited, executed Lot I and Lot II of the Outer Northern Expressway (Kubwa Expressway) projects, respectively. Although the contractors are scheduled to deliver the project to the government at the end of 2014, travelers are already using the roads, which are over 90 per cent completed.
But the expansion of the roads, which was described as another bold step in Nigeria’s March towards vision 20-20, for which the quality of infrastructure is one of the critical elements, is gradually turning into a killing machine. The problem is the open drainage constructed in the middle of the expressways which many have described as a death trap as vehicles regularly crash into them, with fatal consequences.[slideshow]34683[/slideshow]
The situation is usually worse during the rainy seasons. Regular users of the roads lament that about six vehicles find their way daily into the ditch-like drainages on rainy days, often with massive damage to the vehicles involved in addition to fatalities or injuries.
Abu Alfa, Director of Engineering, Federal Capital Territory had told Senate Committee on FCT in April this year that the open drainage was constructed in the middle of the roads because the contractors worked with drawings made in 1991.
“There are no cities in the world where drainages are left opened; even in many states where you have projects, you are not doing open culverts,” he said, wondering why it was different in the FCT. “This constitutes hazard; it is a death trap, and we must sit down and talk [about] the likely solution.”
Senator Smart Adeyemi, the Chairman of the Senate Committee, had also expressed his disgust to the contractors at the meeting.
But as is usually the case, the Senator and his Committee failed to follow their public outrage with the promised action while the drainage has continued to inflict sorrow upon motorists using the expressways.
Photographs below show some of the vehicles that ran into the drainage in the middle of the Airport Expressway.
Pictures by Femi Ipaye.