By Luke Onyekakeyah
Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola’s recent announcement that work on the Second Niger Bridge has been completed made cheery news, especially, for motorists and other travellers who use the Niger Bridge at Onitsha at Christmas. The route is usually bedlam, indeed, hell on earth during Christmas and New Year festivities.
There is hysteria that the suffering and pain experienced at the Onitsha-Asaba Bridge head would, henceforth, be a thing of the past once the Second Niger Bridge is commissioned and opened. Fashola’s announcement came on the heels of the ministry’s acting Federal Controller of Works in Anambra State, Seyi Martins, who announced earlier that the bridge would be ready for use in December 2022.
And true to expectation, the Federal Government has announced that the Second Niger Bridge will open to traffic on December 15, 2022. Jimoh Olawale, the Federal Controller of Works in Delta State, made this known during a recent interview with NAN on Wednesday. However, said that the bridge would be open for only 30 days.
According to him, the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, ordered
the opening of the bridge, which is 95 per cent completed, to ease traffic
during the Christmas and New Year celebrations.
“As
we know, during the Christmas celebration, commuters suffer hardship accessing
the old Niger Bridge due to traffic jams but with this arrangement, traffic
congestion on Asaba-Benin Expressway will ease,” Olawale said.
“We have notified the state government of this arrangement and we are working
with the Federal Roads Safety Corps to ensure a hitch-free vehicular movement.
Motorists going towards Owerri direction would divert through the access road
near the old Niger Bridge to the new bridge.”
At Christmas, millions of people will travel home to join their
kits and kin to celebrate the occasion. Mass movement of people from the North
and South-West to the South-East is a common feature of this season. Heavy
vehicular traffic of goods and people is the norm. There is heightened fear and
apprehension by millions of travellers to the South-East in particular, who
must cross the now infamous Niger Bridge at Onitsha to reach their destination.
Harrowing tales of suffering, pain and anguish by travellers
heading eastwards from the West at the bridge are commonplace. As a matter of
fact, the Niger Bridge experience is like a nightmare at Christmas. While it
may take a traveller about eight hours from Lagos to Asaba, at the height of
the chaos, the same traveller may spend between five to eight hours before crossing
the Niger Bridge from Asaba to Onitsha and vice versa. AS the Christmas draws
nearer, some travellers from Lagos going to the South-East would sleep over at
Onitsha due to the killer traffic jam at the head-bridge.
From around December 15 to New Year, the volume of traffic that
piles up at the 54 year-old bridge is overwhelming. It is as if the entire
region is on the move. Suddenly, everyone finds him or herself at the Asaba
bridge head where every vehicle is compelled to queue behind a stagnant traffic
passing through the only bridge way to Onitsha! This may take hours or days
depending on the particular day. The worst days are December 22, 23, 24 and 25.
Crossing the Niger Bridge on these days is akin to committing psychological
suicide. The trauma is unbearable. Women, children and the elderly suffer
untold distress. The scorching heat that characterises the season aggravates
the pain and anguish.
The
Onitsha end of the bridge, which is in perpetual chaos compounds the problem.
Its poor and unplanned infrastructure where buying and selling are done on the
roads is nerve wrecking. Amid the bedlam on the Niger Bridge are miscreants of
all sorts preying on weary travellers, especially, at night. It is not unusual
that sometimes, thousands of people who could not pass through the bridge spend
their Christmas there in their vehicles. It is an agonising experience that is
better imagined. But despite the ugly experience, every year at this time,
people still troop out to go home. The people from the South-East who go
through this torture every Christmas seem to be unwavering.
A lot has been written and said over the years about the suffering
of Easterners at the bridge during Christmas but without respite. Already, the
annual chaos on the Niger Bridge is unfolding. The fear has been expressed that
the more than five-decade old bridge built with prefabricated steel parts could
collapse from the severe pressure mounted on it daily. That exposes the lives
of thousands of people passing through the bridge to danger. In this system,
the authorities don’t take action on any problem until disaster occurs and then
a fire brigade action is embarked upon.
Since the bridge was completed in December 1965 (57 years ago), to
facilitate transportation of agricultural produce between the Eastern and
Western regions, it is long overdue to have a second bridge to decongest the
old warhorse? Good enough that action is on-going on the second bridge but how
soon the bridge will be completed is dicey. For long, the bridge turned into a
political issue used by politicians to woo the people of the South-East and
South-South who must pass through it. The people are at the receiving end.
Going back to memory, the need to build a Second Niger Bridge was on the drawing board for a long time. It was during the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida in the 80s that it first came into public domain but nothing was done in practical terms.
During the General Abacha’s regime, the Federal Government tried to present a
weak explanation as to why work could not commence on the bridge. That followed
the charge by the former Lagos State Governor, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, then
Minister of Works, that Nigerian engineers could not produce a design for the
bridge project.
After Abacha’s regime ended in 1998, nothing was heard about the
bridge again until the Olusegun Obasanjo administration took over in May 1999.
Obasanjo was in power for eight years. But rather than take concrete action
towards commencing work on the second bridge, he instead awarded billions of
naira worth of contracts for the re-furbishing of the old bridge. The bridge
was virtually left unmaintained over the decades. Government argued that it
wanted to secure the old bridge before building a new one. It was Obasanjo’s
Minister of Works, Chief Cornelius Adebayo, who in 2006 announced that the
Federal Government had approved the construction of the Second Niger Bridge.
But work did not commence as expected.
On May 24, 2007, just five days to his exit from office, President
Obasanjo, in a show of sarcasm, went to Onitsha in Anambra State to lay the
foundation stone for the Second Niger Bridge. It was obvious from the timing
that the event was sheer mockery. The reported N60 billion contract for the
bridge under a Private Partnership Programme (PPP) between the Federal, Anambra
and Delta State governments never saw the light of the day. Nothing came out of
that presidential fanfare.
The
Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration was short-lived. But President Goodluck
Jonathan had in his 2011 presidential campaign promised to “revitalise critical
infrastructure” in the South-East, including the Second Niger Bridge.
Jonathan’s Minister of Works, Mike Onolemomen, had several months earlier,
announced at a stakeholders meeting at the palace of the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe
Alfred Achebe, that the “time has come for action on the bridge.” According to
him, the project design to cover Asaba, Ozubulu and Oghara areas will be
completed before the expiration of Jonathan’s administration in 2015.
From the foregoing, it is obvious that different administrations
paid lip service to the Second Niger Bridge. It is disheartening that a major
landmark like the Niger Bridge was left to the vagaries of politics while
people suffer in traffic. What would happen if the existing bridge suddenly
caves in with huge human and material loses? That would be a national disaster.
When that happens, can the Federal Government reconstruct the bridge overnight?
Or, will Nigerians revert to the pre-1965 era, when people crossed the River
Niger at Onitsha using ferries? How many people would that option serve in
today’s bustling economic environment? And, what quantity of goods could be
ferried across the Niger in this era using that means?
Infrastructural maintenance and development is part and parcel of
governance, which should not attract unnecessary hype. The welfare of the
people is always the priority. But sadly enough, building something as crucial
as a Second Niger Bridge is sacrificed on the altar of our unedifying politics.
Thank God, the bridge is no longer an issue of another political campaigning in
the forthcoming 2023 general elections even if it is not completed by 2022 as
earlier promised by the Federal Government. To manage the traffic crisis
between Onitsha and Asaba this Christmas will require the concerted effort of
the Federal Roads Safety Commission (FRSC), the police and other law
enforcement agencies to make the traffic flow in order to reduce people’s
suffering.
*Dr. Onyekakeyah is a commentator on public issues
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