Uthman Abubakar
5 November 2008
The reconstruction of the Abuja-Lokoja road into a dual-carriage highway is stuck in the mire of distressing paucity of funds without any end in sight. Meanwhile, horrific road traffic carnage occurs unabated there as the road remains narrow for the rapidly widening vehicular traffic.
It should make no one aggrieved that a 60-seater luxurious bus rammed into the ass of a trailer on the Murtala Bridge on the 9th of September, 2008, causing the on-the-spot death of eleven passengers of the bus and the driver's assistant of the trailer; or that just a month earlier, an 18-seater bus swerved off the road and nose-dived into the Gada Biyu, causing the death of 15 of the passengers; or that a Mercedes Benz car misshaped at a village near Kwali, causing the death of three people on Thursday, 23rd October, 2008.
It should frighten no one that two heavy haulage vehicles, like a trailer and a fuel tanker, occupy the entire width of the tarred section of the road with one overtaking the other, as a convoy of cars and buses from the opposite direction advances, all having to share the two-lane road barely wide enough for the two haulage vehicles. In this situation, the commuter vehicles must often swerve off the road, sometimes to the fringes of the bushes, clearing a lane of their own to avoid the occurrence of a most horrendous carnage.
It should also frighten no one that the terrorizing sirens of the speeding convoys of 'their Excellencies' must have the right of way on the two-lane road as a convoy of private cars and buses overtake two or three heavy haulage vehicles.
It should sicken no one that both sides of the main length of the 186-kilometre road are littered with the carcasses of vehicles of various sizes. Neither should it sicken any one that whenever a truck or a bus breaks down or is involved in an accident on the road, it causes a gridlock that lasts for hours before it eases.
All these have in the last couple of years developed into 'normal' occurrences on the road due to their enduring regularity. They are all symptomatic of the terrible problem of insufficiency of space on the road to contain and ensure safe and smooth flow of vehicular traffic according to its current status and level of essentialness.
What should dishearten everyone about the Abuja-Lokoja road on the scale of its current status as the main artery between the North on one hand, and the larger section of the South on the other, and as the main artery serving the nation's capital with the huger throngs of citizens from the southern states, is the stark reality of the fact that such accidents may persist, possibly in much graver enormity till only God-knows-when.
This fear is firmly rooted in the sharp contrast between the status of the road and the prickly dilemma and uncertainty enmeshing its reconstruction into a dual-carriage highway necessitated by its status and economic essentialness.
The contract for the reconstruction of the road, along with the Port Harcourt- Eket and Kano- Maiduguri roads, into dual-carriage highways was awarded by the Federal Government in July 2006 under a presidential initiative by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo at a total cost of N419 billion.
The 186km-long Abuja-Lokoja road, which was to gulp N40 billion, is a part of the Abuja-Abaji-Benin highway linking Abuja to Kogi, parts of the South-western, South-eastern and South-southern states. Like its contract sisters in other parts of the country, the road was divided into four segments for the reconstruction and awarded to different construction companies.
The 42km Zuba-Sheda Section I, which also covers the distance between the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport junction to Giri and including the construction of a flyover at the Giri junction, was awarded to Messrs Dantata & Sawoe Construction Company at the cost over N11.2 billion; Section II covering 57km from Sheda to Abaji was awarded to RCC Nig. Ltd at the cost of over N9.6 billion; Section III covering the 49km Abaji-Kotonkarfi distance was awarded to Bulletine Construction Company Ltd at N9.7 billion; while 50km Section IV from Kotonkarfi to Lokoja was awarded to Gitto Construzioni Generalli Ltd at over N11.9 billion.
While Dantata & Sawoe, RCC and Bulletine seem to be executing, or to have executed, at least 25 percent of the project with only the initial payment of about 11 percent of the contact cost, Gitto doesn't seem to have set foot yet on its own site. RCC seems to have since vacated site after executing whatever amount of work it could with its own initial payment, Dantata & Sawoe has said that it will stop work as soon as it has exhausted its own, while Bulletine has said that it has barely managed to transfer some funds from some of its projects elsewhere to finance its ongoing volume of work, and it will stop work as soon as it exhausts the funds.
Authoritative sources say that at the point of the July, 2006 award of the N419 billion contracts for the dualisation of the road along with its two or three sisters nationwide, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo was advised to approve the execution of the contacts in segments according to the availability of funds to avoid unnecessary breaks which may subsequently lead to their indefinite suspension or even termination before their completion due to possible paucity of funds, but he would not give such approval, arguing that the required funds would always be available.
Alas! The feared paucity of funds seems to have descended heavily on the projects and they are grinding to a standstill in a situation worsened by the bewildering dilemma over where and how to source the funds to ensure smooth execution, if the funds can be sourced anyhow and anywhere at all.
There are various options, the sources say, considered on the way forward on the roads projects. These include sourcing funds from international agencies, sourcing funds internally or, most frighteningly, suspending indefinitely the projects due to the practical unavailability of funds. Fears are raging higher that should the last option be settled for, the projects may not be revisited in the near future due to their cost-intensiveness.
Government seems at pains to accept the first option, more so as it seems heavily leaning towards the second - local sourcing of the funds under which it has already proposed a programme of Public Private Partnership in the projects and subsequent management of the roads, which principally include the re-erection of tollgates by private investors participating in the projects. This option is suffering a severe setback because virtually no private investor seems to have come forth with any level of willingness to participate. It is gathered that some of the contractors, especially Dantata & Sawoe, were approached with the PPP proposal. They have shown no interest. It is said that the banks have also shown no interest. So, sourcing the required funds locally doesn't seem possible.
Therefore, would the last option - suspending the projects until funds are available anytime in future, be settled for? All the parties concerned with the roads projects seem to dread this option because of its grave implication on the very large chunk of the North-South economic activities and the developing status of the federal capital itself - the indefinite suspension of the projects.
The contactors still doing some work on their own sections of the Abuja-Lokoja road - Dantata & Sawoe and Bulletine, do so only in anticipation of some provision for the roads projects in the supplementary federal budget currently before the National Assembly. In a broader sphere, all the contractors handling all such road projects nationwide recently complained to the Upper House of the Federal Parliament, the Senate, about the dearth of funds and threatened to abandon the projects if the situation persists.
The Federal Parliament seems leaning towards making some provision for the projects in the budget, which the government doesn't seem to accept as feasible on its part. The government leans towards sourcing funds through PPP and or other sources, which the parliament doesn't seem to accept as necessary, with most of the parliamentarians complaining that the horrible Abuja-Lokoja road leads them to their constituencies and they detest plying it in that condition.
Should government and the National Assembly fail to agree on easy and speedy sourcing of funds for the roads projects, the remaining two contractors on the Abuja-Lokoja road, could vacate site.
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