VEHICULAR journeys on federal roads in the South-East states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo have become deadly trap for motorists as virtually all the roads have become impassable.
Amansea border town on the Enugu-Onitsha expressway Notable among such roads include the Enugu-Umuahia-Port Harcourt expressway, Onitsha-Owerri road, Enugu-Onitsha expressway, Ninth Mile Corner-Nsukka-Makurdi road as well as Onitsha-Uzo Uwani-Nsukka-Onuiyi-Haven-Ovoko and Enugu Ezike-Umuida-Unadu-Akpanya roads.
The Enugu-Onitsha expressway has turned to a nightmare for motorists as the roads have become virtually impassable. Travellers from the north who pass through the Makurdi-Obollo Afor- Ninth Mile Corner-Awka-Onitsha expressway spend over 12 hours for a journey which usually lasts three and a half hours from Makurdi, Benue State to Enugu. Attendant wear and tear Also, motorists travelling to Onitsha through Enugu to Onitsha expressway or vice versa pass through Udi through Achi-Aguata road to come out at Onisha instead of going through Ninth Mile from Awka to Onitsha, which usually takes fewer hours as the roads have failed in several areas.
As a result, a journey from Onitsha to Enugu, which ordinarily should take about one and half hours, now takes more than five hours, with the attendant wear and tear on the vehicles. The worst sections of the road are the Umunya-Amawbia axis and the Amansea end on the border with Enugu State. The Ninth Mile Corner to Enugu is another terrible portion even with two by-passes constructed by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State to ease traffic congestion caused by bad roads.
The road from Ninth Mile to Makurdi is hellish death traps especially between the Nigerian Brewery junction along Iwollo road to Opi junction at Nsukka. Since the rains became heavy, motorists travelling to Lagos or other South-West states through Onitsha had diverted to the old Onitsha-Enugu road rehabilitated during the administrations of former Governors Peter Obi and Sullivan Chime and the pressure on the rehabilitated road had resulted in potholes and traffic gridlock on the road.
Travellers express worry In the past few weeks, travellers had to spend hours at the Amansea junction following the bottleneck created by the two police checkpoints between Mobile Police, Awka and Amansea, sometimes forcing the passengers to trek several kilometres to get to Awka town to join other vehicles to continue their journeys. Sometimes the traffic gridlock would extend to Ugwuoba in Enugu State and Zik Avenue in Awka. Expectedly, the road users have been expressing worry that the ongoing work on the expressway was very slow, noting that the work would have gone far if the contractors were more serious.
A commercial bus driver, Mr. Joachim Nnakwue, said it was always a terrible experience driving on the road. He said as a result of the bad road, he does only one trip daily between Enugu and Onitsha, as against three to four trips he was doing when the road was good. Another driver, Mr. Nwachukwu Okeke, said due to the diversion drivers make at Umunya, youths of some villages have been extorting money from them as they usually mount emergency toll gates and force drivers passing through their villages to pay.
He said that drivers paid between N300 and N500 before joining the better portion of the expressway at the Awkuzu end of the road. Apart from the Enugu-Onitsha road, the Oba-Okigwe federal highway is also in a deplorable condition as the work there has been going on at snail speed.
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