Commuters groan over deplorable state of Benin-Auchi-Okenne Road

Commuters plying the ever-busy Benin-Auchi-Okenne Highway are groaning as a result of the pains they experience travelling through the road due to its dilapidated state, especially the four kilometres stretch after the Benin bypass, Obagie, Iruekpen, Ekpoma, Ewu, Jattu and Okpella axis.

In fact, it is not possible for any vehicle to drive for two minutes without encountering bad spots, potholes and completely impassable portions of the road.

Within Benin City axis of the road, it takes an average of five to 10 minutes to meander through the Court of Appeal, a stretch of the road that is not more than 200 metres.

The road was awarded to three contractors – RCC, Dantata and Sawoe and Mothercat construction companies – by former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration in 2013, but it was abandoned few weeks before the 2015 general elections and since then, nothing has been done.

The then Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen said the dualisation of the road, which cost was put at N22.7 billion, would be completed in 30 months, just as he promised that inadequate funding, which had characterised the first phase of the project from Lokoja to Abuja, would not be an issue again since the project was then being funded through the Subsidy Re-investment Programme (SURE-P).

Curiously, The Guardian gathered that the road was not included in the 2016 national budget. Since then, work was stopped on the road, which is daily getting worse to the extent that an individual, Bishop Matthew Okpebholo, owner of Ray Royal Construction Company, intervened in the Appeal Court in Benin City, Iruekpen and Ekpoma axis of the road by providing palliatives.

A journey from Benin to Okenne, which normally takes less than three hours, now takes over five hours. A one and half hour journey from Benin to Auchi, now takes a minimum of three hours.

The worst section of the road is in Ekpoma, where commuters would have to veer off the highway to go through inner-city roads and then come out at Irrua, a border community.

Commuters, on a bad day, could spend over two hours trying to navigate out of Ekpoma as some community youths block some roads to collect toll or even turn back recalcitrant road users.

The Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole, made a recent appeal for the Federal Government to fix failed portions of the road. Speaking during a visit of the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, Oshiomhole said the previous government, which worked on the road, left it worse than they met it.