By Collins Chinwike
A QUALITY road network, being the most critical component of a national multimodal transportation plan, is the foundation of a thriving economy. Good roads link up the national socio-economic arteries, centres, and hubs. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Muhammadu Buhari administration is determined to link Nigerians everywhere by road and, consequently, bolster the economy.
By December 2023, the long-abandoned Bodo-Bonny Road project in Rivers State will be completed, bringing to a gleeful and gladdening end, one of the most perplexing chapters in the catalogue of Nigeria’s abandoned projects.
Instructively, this project is significant, because there has never been any road linking the two communities since the advent of human existence and civilization. Natives relied heavily on swimming to get from one end of the community to the other, while wooden boats and, later, motorized ferries were the primary means of transporting people, goods, and services.
Consequently, the large number of agricultural products, such as timber, wood, and fish, which abound in the numerous communities and creeks that straddle Bodo and Bonny, can only be used by the natives or transported at a very high cost to other parts of the country. Although three previous administrations in Nigeria tried to construct the all-important road, they failed. Over the years, it continued to feature in every Federal Government budget.
But help came in the way of the historic project, when the Buhari administration came on board and created a tax credit policy that encourages the private sector to invest in the construction of roads and other critical national infrastructure and be reimbursed by the government. Under the policy, Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, is providing the sum of N200 billion for the Bodo-Bonny road construction, while the Federal Government will refund the money through a tax credit.
As part of President Buhari’s ‘New Vision for the Niger Delta’ Initiative, the road was on the front-burner. On October 12, 2017, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo represented the president at the ground-breaking ceremony, where he said: “This road, during construction, will create jobs directly for engineers, artisans, and labourers, and indirectly for food vendors and suppliers, transporters, quarry operators, and so many others in the construction value chain.
“Upon completion, the project will permanently transform the lives of tens of thousands of Nigerian citizens in and around Bonny Island. It will alleviate the hardship commuters face along the Bonny-Bodo axis; facilitate the operations of the NLNG, and bring significant benefit to the lives of farmers, traders, schoolchildren, and travellers. Five years later, the 39km Bonny-Bodo Bridges and Road are now a reality.
The road snakes through four local government areas and connects the Island of Bonny (a major Nigerian oil and gas hub) to the Ogoni community of Bodo on the Rivers State mainland. It comprises three main bridges: the Afa Creek Bridge (530 metres in length), the Nanabie Creek Bridge (640 metres in length), and a major river bridge of about 750 metres over the Opobo Channel; 10 mini-bridges that will complement the main bridges; a pipeline-crossing bridge; and multiple pipeline crossings and culverts. Together, the bridges total about two kilometers in length. The rest of the 39-kilometer project will consist of an asphalt highway through the low-lying swampy area.”
Though still under construction, the completed stretch is said to have drastically reduced travel time to the Afa Creek Jetty (Patrick Waterside) from 40 minutes to five minutes and travel costs from N6,000 to N2,000 per passenger.
Similarly, residents can now easily access their farms, schools, and health centres. During a recent inspection tour, Minister of Works and Housing Babatunde Raji Fashola stated: “There is no fear that the project will be completed by December next year, or about the funding, or about Julius Berger’s ability and competence to deliver on the project and in superb quality.”
Fashola added: “From the first time I visited to understand the project at hand, it was alarming that people within one state could not connect. They were inhibited. But the Peace Committee set up for the project embraced all the communities in this project area. Thank God, they are all working together now.”
As the first road linking Bonny Island to the rest of Rivers State, the Bodo-Bonny road is a milestone infrastructure development project for the advancement of the Niger Delta and a catalyst for the continued success of Bonny Island – a key industrial area in Nigeria tied to the economic development and general well-being of the nation as a whole.
Similarly, one of Nigeria’s most important highways, the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Road, will enable and improve the movement of people and agricultural products, especially, from the North to the South and vice versa – thereby uniting the Nigerian people and economy, and connecting Nigeria to North Africa via the Lagos-Algiers Trans-African Highway, which also has a 2023 completion date.
To address the poor condition and deterioration of this priority road, Julius Berger was hired to rehabilitate and reconstruct 375.9 kilometres of dual carriageway from the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja through Kaduna, excluding the Kaduna bypass, on to Zaria, and further north to Kano.
To deliver a value-driven solution, Julius Berger is constructing the three road sections simultaneously and has pioneered the use of innovative cold recycling methodologies. The efficient and environmentally-friendly solution results in complete rehabilitation by recycling the milled-off pavement to produce a bitumen-stabilised material, which is then used for paving the base course layer of the new road.
This methodology has numerous benefits. The new road will have an increased bearing capacity compared to the previous pavement constructed with a granular base course, leading to an extended lifespan. It is environmentally friendly, helps to conserve natural resources, construction traffic is greatly reduced compared to conventional methods, there are fewer heavy load-bearing trucks on the road, less road congestion, and the burden on the livelihood of the surrounding communities is diminished.
While speaking in Kaduna at an inspection tour of roads under construction and rehabilitation in the North-Western states, Folorunso Esan, the Director of Highways, Construction, and Rehabilitation of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, expressed delight that the construction on the two sections of the road is going on as scheduled.
He assured Nigerians that they would have access to the entire road by 2023, as work on the two sections has come a long way. “The pace of work and the quality are satisfactory, and it will be delivered before the end of this year. This section two and three will be delivered this year and will only run between Abuja and Kaduna,” he said.
In the South-West, the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, which has suffered many fits and starts, is expected to be completed before the 2023 election. The delay in the completion of the road, Fashola said recently, was due to a drainage system being constructed by the Oyo State government, which slowed down the pace of work on the expressway and forced the contractor to work at night.
He pointed out that part of the delay in the completion of the reconstruction work was the high volume of traffic on the expressway that he estimated at 40,000 per car a day and so it cannot be closed down completely. The 127-kilometre Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is Nigeria’s oldest road, commissioned in 1978 by the military government led by Olusegun Obasanjo.
*Chinwike, a journalist, wrote from Abuja
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