SIR: Each day, the anguish of those using the Lagos-Ibadan expressway seems to peak. The next day, it gets worse. This has been the situation for almost a decade. Had it been possible, the people would have gotten used to it, but humans and hardship are strange bedfellows.
The government seems to have found a formidable ally in Julius Berger. They always find a way to improve, to strengthen the stranglehold on the necks of road users at the Ogun State-Lagos State end of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
Watching miscreants, hoodlums and armed criminals take advantage has left people wondering if all the parties are working together. This thought is hard to resist, given the realities confronting the people. And the onus is on the principal actors to prove otherwise.
If not for a collaboration, why should the federal government concession this critical national infrastructure to Julius Berger? If there’s no strategy behind it, why should a government or a company block Nigeria’s most economically important road without any alternative?
If Julius Berger, for instance, had not been acting out a script, why is the execution of this contract consistently shoddy and taking forever? Those who know argue that this is the pace or quality for which Julius Berger is known. So, there must be more to this than meets the eye.
People also wonder why whole communities like Magboro, Arepo, and Nigeria’s flagship media platforms – The Punch and Channels TV – are arbitrarily blocked, endlessly? How on earth would there be no entrance or exit from several communities on the span of this expressway?
Again, the agony of the people can cry to high heaven, but not to the ears of the APC-led FG or their crony-company, Julius Berger. Had they been listening or hearing, there would have been no need for me to write this. A lot has already been written on this subject.
If these writings had been of any effect, the poor execution, slow pace of work, highhandedness of Julius Berger and arbitrary blocking of portions of the road would have been long looked into.
From trying to fix the long-bridge, which screams poor execution, years after work started on it, to arbitrarily scrapping and resurfacing portions of the road, within days of opening it to the public, the tales of woe are as endless as they are curious. And the audacity of cutting off service lanes which would have aided free flow of traffic are some of the signs that the government and Julius Berger are deliberately unleashing untold hardship upon the citizenry.
Someone observed that the FG is using the road as a campaign tool for the 2023 general elections. So, the deafening public outcry amounts to nothing. The more people complain, the more ears get to hear that the government is doing something. The goal is to earn top of the mind awareness, however it is attained.
Another school of thought has it that Julius Berger is strategically staging a protest because officials of the FG have ‘padded’ and ‘skinned’ the costing for the contract so craftily that the construction firm has found itself merely working for others. The only way it could remain in business, being to tinker with the quality of execution to save costs and break even.
And with that proving a tough task, Julius Berger has been constituting a nuisance with a view to instigating public anguish and outcry in the hope that it can earn a renegotiation of the contract.
These are mere conjectures. But we need the parties to clear the air.
It is also getting to a point where no one can guarantee how the cookies would crumble, because unless something is done, and urgently too, something would give. At the moment, it is on the cliff, desperation is nudging expectation and time is ticking away. Doing a 10-kilometre journey for three hours, on a daily basis, has worn out the citizens.
Who will tell the government that citizens are dying? If they are not told, or refuse to heed, the human remains will soon start decomposing and then, neither the government nor Julius Berger would survive the stench.
- Kenneth Eze,
Yaba, Lagos State