The impending dry season will offer Lagos State Public Works Corporation (LSPWC) the opportunity to fix most roads that have become a nightmare to Lagosians and the state’s major headache, writes ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE
From Ishaga to Agbado, Imota, Ikorodu, to Ikeja, and from Badagry, to Okokomaiko, Oshodi, Apapa, to Marina, Lekki, to Victoria Island, Lagosians are facing virtually the same challenge – bad roads.
Short of declaring an emergency on roads, the Babajide Sanwo-Olu-led administration has prioritised transportation and made road infrastructure a corner piece of his five-point agenda.
The governor might have taken a cue from experts, who had urged the government to chart a new course in policies if it must save the state from total transportation paralysis.
Dean, School of Transportation Studies, Lagos State University (LASU), Prof Samuel Odewunmi, had at the first yearly lecture of the school, last month, propounded two theories, which he said could bring instant relief and new travel experience to Lagosians.
Citing the first theory, he said:“Our heritage will always be bigger than our legacy,” while canvassing the return of maintenance culture and sustenance of all inherited transport infrastructure against the pursuit of legacy projects. The second theory is: “Our travel time and experience are defined by the worst part of the journey”.
According to the transport scholar, the focus on legacy or signature projects to the detriment of maintenance of inherited projects was the bane of the former Ainwumi Ambode administration, urging his successor to pursue sustenance rather than legacy as no government could achieve or bequeath more to its people in four years than the totality of its wealth inherited from previous governments.
The ugly narrative of Lagos roads, Odewumi said, could only be changed not by any staggering projects, but by government addressing all bad roads and enthroning all-year-round maintenance culture to prevent further deterioration.
Blood in arteries
Liking bad spots on roads to clots in human blood arteries, Odewunmi said only regular maintenance could prevent clotting (congestion) and eventual death (total collapse of the road).
He said: “To avoid traffic cardiac arrests, the government must work on all pot holes, craters or distressed spots on the roads to enable people enjoy their travels around the state.
“School of Transportation (SOT) will always assist the government in continuously studying all the difficult spots and provide timely, simple, cheap and effective solutions to give Lagos commuters significant better travel experience on the roads.”
Since assumption of office, Governor Sanwo-Olu has left no one in doubt about his commitment to smoother road network.
Not only did he sign an executive order on transportation within 24 hours of his assumption of office, he gave a marching order to the state’s public works department to embark on aggressive remediation of all roads in the state.
Sanwo-Olu has also restated his commitment to the state’s masterplan, which also gained a mileage with the willingness of former Governor Babatunde Fashola, to openly associate with it.
Fashola, whose last public appearance in the state was four years ago, was at the Traffic Radio lecture last month, where he called for a state of emergency on the roads.
The former Minister of Power, Works and Housing had described traffic congestion as “a blessing” and argued that “it is not totally strange for any state that plays Lagos’ role in their economy to experience gridlock, citing New York, in the United States, or London, in the United Kingdom, among others, where traffic was equally challenging”.
Fashola insisted that despite forays into other modes of transportation such as rail, air and water, roads would continue to shoulder a huge proportion of travel needs of the people.
“What that means is that you must continue to work at ensuring that the roads continue to serve the purpose for which they were constructed. You must continue to fix all roads, ensuring regular maintenance to prevent them from dilapidation.”
NBS Data
Although the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) estimated vehicle population in Nigeria as at second quarter of 2018 at 11, 760,871, which was about 0.06per cent of the nation’s estimated population of 193, 392,517, vehicle density in Lagos State is estimated to be above national average at 1,456,770.
For more than half a century, vehicle density in the state remained low due largely to poverty, but the narrative changed from 1970s, following the nation’s economic prosperity arising from the oil boom and the enhanced wages of civil servants (then known as the Udoji awards). The new boom gave birth to the educated middle class whose taste changed quickly from the acquisition of bicycles to ownership of motor cars. As cars of various shades and brands took over, there was the need for more roads to be constructed, and the country, especially Lagos, which served as the nation’s capital became the construction yard. This resulted into over 70 per cent of the road network in the state being classified as Federal roads, as they were stratified into Trunk A, B or C roads, with states coming up with primary, secondary and tertiary roads classifications to demarcate them in terms of their centrality and critical importance network.
Prosperity
Although Fashola would see the growing vehicular density as a measure of the state’s continued prosperity, but a safety consultant, and Executive Director of Safety Without Borders (SWB), Mr Patrick Adenusi, argued that bad roads accounted for about 70 per cent of reasons the roads are clogged and smooth travel have become a rarity in Lagos.
Adenusi, who agreed with Fashola on the state’s continued economic viability, however challenged the government to audit its road network in order to provide timely solution to prevent total collapse of roads in the state.
Being home to the nation’s busiest water, air ports, as well as the nation’s money and capital markets, Lagos, according to Adenusi, will continue to attract huge traffic.
Describing transportation as the wheel of the economy, Adenusi insisted that “the state and the country would not be able to maximise their economic viability if the perennially chaotic traffic remains untamed”.
Admitting that the state roads were in a terrible state, Lagos State Public Works Corporation’s (LSPWC’s) General Manager, Mr Olufemi Daramola, pleaded for understanding and patience.
“If we are not yet within your area, we are on our way,” Daramola said last week. “What we inherited when we assumed office was a total disaster and we have been given a strong mandate to get rid of as much distress, gridlock and as many potholes as we can in the possible shortest time,” he said.
According to him, the agency is committed to implementing Sanwo-Olu’s directive, adding that with the state’s three asphalt production units back in operation, the agency is better positioned to deploy men and materials in the three different locations at Ojodu, Imota (in Ikorodu) and Badagry simultaneously to fix roads and make motoring more pleasurable for commuters.
“I must admit that we have a major road crisis on our hands, but we want to assure Lagosians that we are committed to rehabilitating all our roads,” he said.
Daramola who assumed office on June 15, said though he and his men had hit the ground running, their task were hampered by the rain, which made remediation impossible, but urged patience as the agency will swing into action during the dry season.
He said the agency’s investigation has revealed that about 60 per cent of the roads have outlived their designed lifespan and needs total rehabilitation rather than isolated fixing of pot holes as envisaged.
Daramola, a civil engineer, said “besides the current intervention, the agency plans to establish ‘gangs’ in all the 20 local governments and 37 LCDAs to improve LSPWC’s responsiveness to road distress. The LSPWC would also continue to work with Traffic Radio, Lagos State Transport Management Authority (LASTMA) and the Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC), in order to continue to update its database on distressed roads.
“We empathise with our people, and we want to assure them that we are working tirelessly across the state. The rain is there, sometimes, we have down times of our own facilities, but we can promise that once the rains subside we will double our efforts, because we can be sure that if we are deploying materials it would not be washed away. We have had to work on some locations four times due to heavy downpour. This is making our job cumbersome and highly challenging, but we are going to beg for more understanding from our people.
”I am very convinced that before the next rainy season the state would be in a better position as we are committed to the zero potholes directive of His Excellency,” he said.
Daramola also disclosed that the government would soon unveil a holistic drainage master plan.“Our findings showed that the state needs to urgently address its drainage systems as all the six channels have become grossly inadequate for the state.
“Where they are available, we discovered that many of our drainage have failed and heavily silted. Many are out of alignments and no longer collect storm water. The effect is that storm water that ought to pass through them end up being retained by the roads. This ultimately causes depression on the road and affect mobility,” he said.
He said while the LSPWC would continue to make the road useful and passable, the ultimate solution to perennial bad roads is to open up all the clogged and failed drainage in order to ensure that storm water that could damage the roads are not retained on them.
He said the coming dry season, being the first in the life of Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration, would be fully exploited to address all lingering challenges that Lagosians face on the road.
“I can assure you that a multi-agency strategy would soon be massively deployed by the government in its determination to change the transportation narrative once the dry season begins,” he said.
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