2 months gridlock continues on Okene-Okpella highway drivers, passengers groan

By Dada Ahmed in Okene

The gridlock that now characterise the Okene-Okoella highway, but started as a child’s play about two months ago, got worsened on Saturday with most vehicles, especially articulated ones, remained standstill, the Correspondent of The Reporters,an online publication, reports.

Our Correspondent who visited the road reports that the traffic jam depicts a grid of intersecting streets, completely congested that no vehicular movement was possible.

At the popular check point highway in Okene in Kogi state, where the gridlock started, hundreds of articulated vehicles carrying goods such as petroleum products and consumables, including the perishables, were seen stranded.

Investigation by our Correspondent showed that the gridlock has gone up to Okpella in neighbouring Edo state,as at the time of this report, covering over 10 kilometers.

Most the drivers such as Malam Sadik Mohammed, Abdullahi Hamisu, Ugochukwu Silvanus among others, in their separate interview with the our Correspondent, attributed the problem to the terrible nature of the road which made it impossible for smooth motoring anymore on the road.

Silvanus said, “I am an articulated vehicle driver(trailer) and I have been on this road for the past three days without moving an inch because of the gridlock occasioned by the long years of neglect and deplorable nature of Okene-Auchi upto Benin road.

Mohammed said ” The suffering of drivers and motorists,while plying this road,is highly imagined than said.”

The Kano-Benin driver noted that most commercial drivers were reluctant to ply the road in recent time,because of its bad nature, adding that the facility was characterised by ubiquitous potholes, some looking like gully erosion, with serious telling effects on the wearing and tearing on vehicles as well the health of the drivers.

Silvanus called on the federal government to put the road in proper shape to avoid a development where by residents along Okene-Auchi road would be cut off from the rest of the world.

In similar vein our Correspondent who also plied Okene-Lokoja road on Sunday,reports that the situation of the road also calls for urgent attention of the government in fixing the facility, to ensure smooth traffic and check autocrash.

Many of the commercial drivers that spoke with The Reporters complained bitterly about the “terrible experience” they had been subjected to as a result of the bad nature of the road.

Seidu Amoka, one of such drivers told our correspondent that more than 50 per cent of his proceeds from driving on the road usually go for the repair of accelerated wear and tear on his vehicle,due to the bad road.

“Most commercial drivers plying the Okene-Lokoja road do so because there is no alternative work for us, most of us would have pulled out of driving because the work does not pay again.

*The fact that we increased the transport fare from Okene to Lokoja from N500 to N800 per trip, not withstanding, the cost of maintain our vehicles, increased tax, high cost of spare parts among other car expenses have taken our gain at the end of the day.

“We are begging either the state or federal government to come to our aid by repairing this road,to make easy for us and passengers paying through nose to ply the road to their different destinations.

“I usually take pain relief drugs such as panadol to ease the pain of driving along this road and I understand that continued consumption of such drug is not good
is not good for kidney.”