Christmas: Hard times for South-East, South-South travellers

■ Motorists, commuters recount ordeal in Asaba, Onitsha ■ Many stranded, sleep over at Ihiala military roadblock ■ ‘I spent 50 minutes flying from Abuja to Asaba, but four hours crossing over to Onitsha’

South East travellers coming home to celebrate the festive season with families and friends have had to lament about their traffic ordeal at the River Niger Bridge Head, and its “mother of all sufferings” counterpart at the Ihiala military checkpoint. Both traffic chokepoints have now become something of a nightmare to travellers heading to the South East from the western part of the country. The agonies and pains that they go through are compounded by the multiple checkpoints and roadblocks placed on the various roads leading into the region.

Since December 16, the Niger Bridge has proved practically impassable owing to the blockade mounted on the bridge by many security agencies and purported revenue collectors extorting commuters. On daily basis, gridlock from both ends of the bridge spirals into the cities of Asaba and Onitsha, making vehicles spend between three and nine hours on the axis. Residents of the two towns are also not spared of the pangs of the gridlock.

Situation report, by Saturday Sun reporter

When our reporter visited the bridge yesterday, it was like a house of commotion for the three hours that he spent in the area. From the Onitsha end, he ran into a long stretch of vehicles wanting to access the bridge. It stretched from the bridge down to the Upper Iweka, Lagos Park.

Getting to the bridge proper, he discovered a thin line of vehicles moving freely. At the Asaba end, he ran into another long line of vehicles wanting to cross over to the Onitsha end. It stretched from the neck of the bridge at the Asaba Toll Gate till Abraka Junction in Delta State.

Soldiers stationed their army vehicle in the middle of the bridge and allowed vehicles to enter the bridge in a single file, one at a time.  Parked beside the GUO Motors Asaba terminal was a police vehicle with the inscription: “Operation Safer Delta”.  He found few metres away several policemen on both sides of the road busy extorting money from vehicle owners, private and public, and, in the process, helping to increa se the agonies being experienced by commuters. There were also men in blue apron issuing tickets and collecting money from commercial vehicle drivers.

At the centre of the bridge, soldiers were seen clutching assault rifles or hanging them on their bodies while leaning on the bridge pillars. Three plainclothes men were seen collecting money on their behalf.  The reporter watched as they got clearance from the soldiers to either leave a driver or delay him until he pays. Located at the Onitsha end were various groups like Ocha Brigade, Anambra Youth Traffic Volunteers, Anambra Traffic Management Agency (ATMA) Police and Federal Road Safety Corps personnel. As our reporter discovered, it was more of a competition on who would collect more money from the commuters, than traffic control.

Nonso Igwedibia, a traveller who spoke to Saturday Sun, hissed, out of frustration while narrating his experience on the road.

“I took a 50 minutes flight from Abuja to Asaba airport hoping to meet up with an engagement I have in Awka, but too bad that I’ve spent four hours trying to cross over to the Onitsha end since our flight landed,” he said. “I cannot understand what is going on here. I don’t know why we must continue to suffer unnecessarily in this country.” 

Eya Johnson, a traveller heading to Ikom, Cross Rivers State from Lagos, said that it was hellish making the trip at this period, lamenting that he and his family had been trapped at the Asaba end of the Niger Bridge for upward of five hours. A bus driver, Anthony Obumse, who plies the Asaba-Onitsha route also lamented the long hours wasted on the route because of the blockade. He said: “Normally, if the road is free, it takes just 10 minutes to get to Onitsha from Asaba, but this time around; we sometimes spend three hours to get to Onitsha. If the law enforcement agents working in this route can declare “operation keep moving” while the touts are flushed out, I think we can make progress, especially at this Christmas season.” Johnbosco Ezika, a resident of Asaba trading at the Onitsha Bridge Head said to get home after the day’s business was akin to passing through hell.

A Lagos-based businessman, Mr. Ope Obafemi, who recently experienced the rigour of travelling to the eastern part of Nigeria,  said travellers should be ready to spend three days on the road as there are security check-ups after every ten- minute drive.

According to him, he opted to book a flight to Asaba after failure to get a ticket to Owerri, which was his real destination, but, the experience left him regretting his decision. 

“We flew from Lagos to Asaba, then hoped to drive from there to Owerri to attend a burial ceremony. We left Asaba airport around 7:20 pm.  We were told that that the journey is a maximum of two hours. We moved. Within one hour, we did a very good speed, then we met traffic. We were told that the military barricaded the road for security checks. We got to the traffic jam with the hope of leaving in the next 10 to 15 minutes, but that was a lie. After one hour, there was no end in sight, by this time it was around 9:30pm. There was fear in us. I wanted to jump down but I was assured that there was no problem with security and then we spent another hour again making it two hours. By the time we got to the barricade, to my surprise chagrin, they were negotiating with haulage trucks and commercial vehicles. You would see them negotiate with drivers and if the driver could not pay, they’d remain on one spot while others waited in the queue.  It dawned on me that we spent two horrible hours on a 200meter road. After that, we met another barricade where we spent another one hour. We left that place and in another 10mins again we met another barricade and spent another hour again. If anybody is travelling, he should just plan to spend like three days on the road,” he stated.

Efforts made by authorities to ease the gridlock

Meanwhile the Onitsha Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines, and Agriculture (ONICCIMA) has urged the federal authorities, security agencies, as well as the governors of Anambra and Delta States to do something about the menace posed by the Niger Bridge gridlock which they claimed is caused by the activities of some unscrupulous law enforcement agents on both ends of the bridge.

Kelvin Obieri, its newly elected President, in a statement in Onitsha on December 18, criticized the activities of some law enforcement agents whom he accused of setting up unnecessary roadblocks under the guise of “security concerns” at the Asaba end of the bridge that are causing gridlocks with the consequent economic hardship and losses to the people. He urged that the activities of the security personnel be limited to surveillance and monitoring to ensure free flow of traffic.

Speaking on the same issue, the Delta State Governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, promised to set up a taskforce comprising the police, the military, FRSC officials and the Delta State Traffic Management Authority to handle traffic situation congestion in the state. At a recent joint press conference he held with the Corps Marshal of the FRSC, Dr. Boboye Oyeyemi, in Government House, Asaba, he called on the military and the police to dismantle their checkpoints around the bridge so as to ease movement of vehicles.

“It is my hope that working together, they (our taskforce and FRSC officials) will be able to ensure truly that we have a free flow of traffic at that point (the River Niger Bridge),” he noted. Oyeyemi said that he was in Asaba to brief the governor on the annual review meeting on how to ease off traffic at the Asaba bridgehead. He noted that his men had been deployed to the area to ensure that no passenger or road user was stranded on the Asaba/Onitsha route during the festive period. Saturday Sun gathered that the FRSC had deployed additional 600 personnel to Anambra State and 652 others to Delta State.

Similarly, the House of Representatives recently directed security agencies to remove multiple checkpoints on highways leading to the South-East. This followed the adoption of a motion by the lawmaker representing Idemili North and Idemili South Federal Constituency of Anambra State, Obinna Chidoka, at the plenary in Abuja.

Before then, the House had, on December 1, directed the Inspector-General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, to dismantle all illegal and needless police and military checkpoints across highways in the country. The mover of the motion, Ifeanyi Momah, harped “on the need to investigate loss of many lives along the Onitsha-Owerri express road within Ihiala Federal constituency.”

It was gathered that commuters sometimes stay up to six hours at the Ihiala military checkpoint, while those who got there after 6pm are made to sleep overnight as the road is usually blocked completely at that time of the day. (Courtesy Saturday Sun)