Motorists plying the Benin/Auchi Highway have appealed to the Federal Government to urgently repair the Ehor/Ekpoma section of the road that has been cut into two by a gully erosion.
The motorists said that the plea became necessary due to the deplorable state of that section of the highway.
They told our correspondent in separate interviews that they had been undergoing untold hardship on the road due to the effect of the bad portion of the highway.
The motorists noted that driving within the section had become hectic, especially since the beginning of the rainy season.
They said the current situation had increased the duration of their journey from Benin to Auchi, which used to last between two and two and a half hours, to four hours.
The motorists said they now had to find alternative routes inside Ekpoma main town, which was fairly better than the highway.
A motorist, Omo Isaac, said, “This has been our predicament since the rainy season started. We waste so much time trying to navigate the route to get to our destinations.
“As I speak with you, the Ekpoma section of the highway is impassable. What we do is to pass through another road in Ekpoma town, which is also not in good condition but at least manageable.’
Another motorist, Mr. Sunday Amune, decried a situation where several articulated vehicles break down on the Ekpoma section of the highway due to its deplorable state.
He said that this had rendered the road impassable for other motorists.
“Some of my colleagues, who got trapped in the traffic following the daily rain spent almost the whole day at one spot. As I speak with you, we do not use the highway again. We navigate through Ekpoma main town to come out around Irrua axis.
“It is really a terrible experience that one is not proud of. The most annoying thing is that we suffered a similar thing last year,’’ Amune said.
Similarly, Mr. Dominic Osayi said that several motorists had to pass through a longer route through Irruekpen/Afuze to get to Auchi last year.
Osayi said that the route would be very bad now as that section of the road had also failed.
He appealed to the government to ameliorate the suffering of motorists because the time wasted had affected their income, adding that it had also contributed to the frequent mechanical faults suffered by their vehicles.
A commuter on the route, who simply identified himself as Raheem, appealed to the authorities to urgently repair the road.
He said that the burden of traffic bottleneck was always shifted to commuters by way of increase in transport fares.
“It will not surprise you that some motorists have already increased the fares they charge commuters. Benin to Auchi that usually cost between N700 and N800 is now N1,000; no thanks to the current deplorable state of the highway,” he said.
But the South-South Controller of the Federal Ministry of Works, Mr. Charles Okonmah, said the government was aware of the poor state of the road.
He said that a contractor had been contacted to carry out repairs on the road but that the contractor was not able to move to site because of the delay in the passage of the budget.
“We are quite aware of the situation on that axis of the road. The ministry has contacted the contractor, Dantata and Sawoe, to fix that portion of the road. But of course, the contractor has not been able to carry out the job because they are being owed.
“However, I am sure they will be able to do that now that the budget has been signed into law. We regret the inconvenience the bad portion of the highway has been causing motorists plying it. We assure them that fixing it is a top priority for us,’’ Okonmah said.
