Benin And The Irony Of A Bypass

By Chuks OLUIGBO

The first time I travelled to Lagos from Imo State was in 1994, as a secondary school boy. It was Easter break, and my big brother was home. After the Easter celebration, I opted to go back to Lagos with him to spend the remaining two weeks of my rather too short holiday. We travelled in his car.

Adams Oshiomhole: Edo State governor

My most lasting and indeed most painful memory from that first trip was the cloud-thick traffic congestion we met in Benin, the capital of today’s Edo State. While the journey from Owerri to Benin took about three hours, it took us over four hours to cross over from Benin main town to Okada, just on the outskirts of the city. It was unbearable. I was told the traffic jam was caused by the high concentration of people and markets in the town. As awful as that experience was, it was one I was condemned to encounter for many more years to come, so long as I continued travelling to Lagos by road. And I was not alone in that situation. It was the plight of all travellers along that route.

It was therefore a great relief when in 2002 the Benin Bypass was opened to traffic by the Obasanjo administration. The by-pass, covering a total area of about 24 kilometres, connects the Ore-Benin road with the Benin-Asaba end of it, thereby saving commuters the stress of getting stuck in the highly congested city. When it was opened, it was indeed a delight to travellers. It brought considerable relief to motorists and other residents of the Edo State capital.

However, the euphoria that greeted the opening of the by-pass did not last for too long. Soon, one lane failed, perhaps due to low quality construction work or structural defects. As a result, the bad lane was temporarily closed for repairs, and Reynolds Construction Company Limited started repair works on the bad spot near the Ikpoba River.

The use of the only available lane created a congestion which led to series of fatal accidents on that road. Sometime in 2008, there emerged speculations that the Edo State government was making plans to temporarily close the by-pass on the grounds of the incessant motor accidents on the Ikpoba Slope section of the road. According to a Sunday Punch report of February 10, 2008, more than 35 people died at the Ikpoba Slope section within three months of closing one lane of the dual carriage road. Most of the accidents along the road, the report said, were caused by heavy-duty vehicles whose brakes failed while descending the slope. They often ran into vehicles on the path, causing deaths and injuries.

The bad spots on the bypass have long been put into good shape and the two lanes reopened to traffic. And just as commuters were about to heave a sigh that their worst nightmares were over, armed highway robbers took over the bypass. Now they operate there almost on a daily basis, in broad daylight, without any hindrance, even with the heavy presence of armed policemen at different points on the road. Thus, the by-pass, which was constructed to provide a relief for travellers, has turned around to become a valley of torments and sorrows.

The following experience was shared by a certain Ufuoma on Vanguard Online Community website. In the report entitled “Armed Robbery Unlimited on Benin Bypass”, she wrote: “I got lucky on Wednesday, 2nd September, 2010 by the grace of God, because our driver almost entered (the bypass) but changed his mind because of two guys he saw and suspected at the entrance of it on our way to Ibadan from Warri. We had not even reached Ring Road when we heard on the radio that armed robbery operation was going on there.”

“My younger brother that came to Warri from Lagos also told us when he got home that they too almost ran into robbers on the same road, and I remember a driver of the vehicle I boarded from Lagos telling us that he can never pass through that road (Benin Bypass). When we asked him why he took Lagos-Benin road instead of the bypass, he told us that transporters have abandoned the by-pass because robbery there is almost on a daily basis,” she further reported.

Recently too, precisely on April 14, 2011, there were reports of a motor accident on the Benin Bypass caused by armed robbers which claimed the life of one person, leaving 14 others with varying degrees of injuries. Reportedly, the accident occurred at about 12pm when two buses had a head-on collision while trying to escape from armed robbers who were operating on the road. The driver of one of the buses involved in the accident, Mr Austin Okeke, said he was returning from Lagos to the East when they encountered the armed robbers at the Benin Bypass.

As a frequent traveller on the Lagos-Benin Road, I have also personally come upon the activities of these men of the underworld on virtually every single trip I made. Almost all the time, we would get to a point and see vehicles parking by the side of the road. On asking, we would be told that ‘they are in front’, referring to the armed robbers. Every movement would be halted until there was a signal that ‘they have gone’. Sometimes the signal might take more than one hour in coming. On one of such trips, one driver actually said  what baffled me: that these robbers operate up to three times in a day, at different hours, usually on the same spot. Worst of all, they go unchallenged.

But who are these armed robbers? Are they intractable, even with the heavy presence of armed security men on that road? Is there nothing the government of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole can do to put an end to this? For, though the bypass is a federal road, it is still within the domain of the comrade governor.  And whether he likes it or not, the activities of these men of darkness are causing a bad image for his government. Can’t security be beefed up on that road? Can't the security men there be pulled out and more proactive ones be deployed there? Can't more police and army officers be deployed there if the ones already there are not enough? Too many questions begging for answers.

I personally believe that both the Edo State government and the Federal Government can team up to battle this high incidence of armed robbery on the bypass, unless they don’t want to. When ex-Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State successfully stopped the use of commercial motorcycles in the capital city of Owerri, Uche Ogbuagu, a renowned Nigerian comedian, made the observation that the government can stop anything it wants to stop. If the government says it cannot stop it, then it is benefitting from it. Can it then be said that both the FG and the Edo State government are benefitting from the activities of armed robbers on the Benin Bypass? No one can say for sure. The action they take or refuse to take within the coming weeks to curb this menace will judge...